The tedious discussions about species and their origin have always been relatively mere side issues. The leading idea of the evolution theory is that it professes to give us a genuine history of the slow development of life on the globe. But the only possible history it can furnish is by just such instances of different kinds of fossils in the rocks, like those described in the previous article. Yet the only way by which evolutionists can make any real history out of these fossils, is by quietly assuming a time value for them under such conditions as we have been considering. Hence it is clear that geologists have deluded the world into believing that they have proved these time values when they have only assumed them without the slightest attempt at proof.
It is admittedly difficult or impossible to prove a universal negative, even under the most genuine of circumstances; and the geologist admits that he cannot prove that all these diverse kinds of animals could not have lived together. Yet he claims that he has all the proof that ought to be necessary. He admits the difficulty of the subject; but he appeals to the principle of inductive reasoning, under which true conclusions may be drawn from a number of diverse specific examples. He declares that these three types of fossils, the trilobites, the dinosaurs, and the elephants, whenever found, always occur in the same relative position or order, never in the reverse sequence; and he claims that it is a fair conclusion that these animals really lived in this relative order, the trilobites first, the dinosaurs afterward (long, long afterward, he would say), and lastly the elephants. During more than a hundred years all geologists have taken this time order of the fossils for granted; they have built up their entire classification of the fossils on this assumed time order; and they have repeatedly assured us that this relative time order holds absolutely good all over the world. Their entire system of dating the rocks, and thus the whole theory of organic evolution, would collapse if this time order of the fossils should prove unreliable. And yet until the present writer ventured to question this time order, some thirty-five years ago, no one seems to have dared to question this idea for nearly a hundred years.
We must repeat again that the entire historical part of the theory of organic evolution is logically involved whenever we admit that a time element is shown by the fossils in successive beds. Conversely, the evolutionary theory collapses at its very beginning and in its most conspicuous part, if we cannot establish this time sequence for the representative fossils.
Surely there ought to be some strictly scientific method of settling this problem from the rocks and fossils themselves, instead of having to depend upon abstract assumptions and vague and inconclusive reasonings. Since the evolutionary geologist places his main dependence on the alleged fact that the fossils always occur in the rocks in the same relative sequence as in the typical locality already mentioned, the natural method of settling the matter would seem to be to hunt around over the globe to see if this is really so.
But suppose that trilobites and other deep-sea creatures are found in 70 or 80 per cent of the localities in the lower layers, with other forms of life, such as the large reptiles or mammals, in the upper beds. Might we not very easily and very naturally explain these facts as due entirely to the specific gravity and other conditions which would prevail during any such disturbance as a universal flood? The deep-sea animals, being bottom feeders, would be helpless in any unusual disturbance of the waters of the ocean, and would be quickly overwhelmed. The big reptiles and other land animals would not so readily perish, and when finally overcome and drowned, would be buried only in the deposits nearer the surface. As a matter of fact, the dinosaurs seem to occur about as often in surface localities as do the mastodons and other mammals. There are no stratigraphical reasons for making the dinosaurs older than the mammals.
Clearly enough, we can readily account for the fact that it is usual to find the fossils in something like the traditional order. But the crucial test for the entire scheme would be met by finding clear examples of the fossils in the reverse order. If such contradictory conditions should be discovered in a few plain and unambiguous localities, surely the honest seeker after truth would have to own that the time values of the fossils must be abandoned. This would of course mean that the scheme of organic evolution would have no history on which to build, but would collapse like the oft-cited house of cards.
And yet, since the entire philosophy of organic evolution is logically at stake, we might expect a fierce battle over any attempt to discredit the time values of the fossils and to establish the contemporaneity of the fossils (and thus the flood theory) in its place. But great numbers of localities have been discovered where the fossils do occur in an order which flatly contradicts the evolutionary scheme. These examples are known to every geologist. But the latter has such implicit faith in his theory of the "true" order of the fossils that he is quite undisturbed when he finds examples which directly contradict it. The Alps, the Highlands of Scotland, the Southern Appalachians, the Salt Range in India, are dealt with in numerous big books where the evidence is explained away. The large area in Montana and Alberta, over five hundred miles long and thirty or fifty miles wide, with dinosaur skeletons in the lower beds running under the mountains and trilobites and other "oldest" fossils in the upper beds, involving all the main range of the Rocky Mountains,—even such a clear and colossal example in fiat contradiction to his theory does not disturb the evolutionist in the least. He tells us with a sober countenance that these very "old" beds now on top were formerly deep down many miles underneath, but have been lifted up and pushed bodily over across the soft shales for the forty or fifty miles, to the place where we now find the Rocky Mountains standing. And he has a similar explanation for all the other localities in the Alps and elsewhere.*
Clearly enough, there are plenty of scientific facts to discredit the evolutionary scheme of the fossils and to justify flood geology. But as yet these facts have made but a slight impression upon the world. Even some Fundamentalists are still teaching the day-age theory of the fossils, or the pre-Adamite theory of a world ruin before the creation of the first chapter of Genesis. I still believe that if someone had the time and the money to visit all the localities where the fossils contradict the evolutionary theory, and could gather all the scientific facts involved, he might even yet make some definite impression upon honest-minded, thinking people. Whether or not such a method of overthrowing the evolutionary scheme of the fossils, thus establishing the flood theory and, indirectly, the truth of a literal fiat creation, will ever be carried out, I do not know. For nearly thirty-five years I have devoted the best of my energies to the task, though the work seems as yet hardly begun. Several young men of good education are needed in various parts of the world to pick up this work and carry it forward as long as the Master still tarries. It would seem that the actual scientific facts from the rocks which contradict the evolution theory cannot always be ignored or suppressed.
College Place, Wash.
* The details of these examples are given in several of Professor Price's books, particularly in "Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism," and The New Geology : A Textbook for Colleges," both published about ten years ago. His "Geological-Ages Hoax" (Revell. 1931) is a briefer and more recent discussion of the same subject—Editors.
