In Hebrews 1:11, we read "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Some Creationists like to adapt this verse, creating a jab at Evolutionists: "Faith is the substance of fossils hoped for; the evidence of evidence not seen." Setting aside discussions of the morality of such statements, it of course highlights the fact that, while Evolutionists boast of their "mountains of evidence", they have precious little to actually show. In fact, large portions of supposed evidence for Evolution are either fraudulent, or wildly speculative. Meanwhile, the evidence Evolutionists desperately need to upgrade their religion from pure speculation to working theory just does not exist.
The most obvious objection, even according to Darwin himself, is that if Evolution truly happened, the fossil record would contain "innumerable" transitional forms. Yet, it does not. In his book, Darwin repeatedly pointed out that if Evolution is true, innumerable, or numberless transitional forms must have existed, and thus, by all rights, geology should be full of them. He then rightly points out that geology does not reveal such a history, and this, he said, "...is the most obvious and gravest objection..." that can be urged against Evolution.
Now, we can debate whether or not it is truly the gravest, but it is certainly the most obvious. This objection is so obvious, and so effective, that I'd be willing to bet every Creationist who has ever defended the doctrine to their Evolutionist friends has used it. The fossil record is such a formidable foe of Evolution that if a child was given a week to read a book, they would never run out of ways to humiliate their Evolutionist science teacher.
This is even true in times when Evolutionists claim to have found their transitional forms. Take, for example, this famous image, taken from a clip in which Richard Dawkins explains his beliefs about the Evolution of whales. He is pointing to a well organised diagram of imagination. Now, obviously, hippos, whales, and dolphins exist, but that is about as close as this chart comes to describing reality.
To begin with, a large portion of the animals on this chart don't actually exist. The best you can say is they exist, they just don't actually look anything like what Evolutionists want them to. Pakicetus, for example. Its name means "Whale from Pakistan", which is incredibly embarrassing for the Evolutionists who named it.
Initially, only a few fragments of skull were found, and of course, Evolutionists have a child-like habit of making up the most detailed stories from the least evidence, like when they found a pig's tooth and turned it into a whole family of monkey men. So, you can only imagine what they did to these few skull fragments. Incidentally, they also only imagined what they could do with these skull fragments, as they quickly turned it into a semi-aquatic whale ancestor. That is, until more remains were found, and the "whale" from Pakistan turned out to be a well designed runner, with only its feet touching the ground. Pakicetus is no candidate for whale ancestry.
But let's suppose we could prove, indisputably, that the original concept art for Pakicetus is representative of a very real creature. Now, you have a host of other problems, starting with the fact that those lines connecting them on the chart are both unproven and unprovable. You cannot prove one fossil species is related to another, living or dead. You cannot prove Pakicetus is related, in any way, to hippos, whales, or dolphins. In fact, basic biology presents several problems for this asinine idea. Pakicetus, much like any other living organism, was designed to bring forth its own kind. For as long as we have observed, living organisms come from organisms similar to themselves, and produce organisms similar to themselves.
This one simple fact perfectly explains Darwin's grave objection. If all living organisms were designed to reproduce according to their kinds, we would expect the fossil record to preserve a collection of diverse, yet sparse, fully formed kinds, showing variation within kinds, but not links between them. This is what we find, and this is why we find it.
But Evolutionists will search in vain for their finely graduated organic chain. In spite of the relative completeness of the fossil record, transitional forms simply do not exist.
But it is perhaps unhelpful to say this, as modern Evolutionists generally do not understand the concept of transitional forms. In fact, they will often claim to have found several examples, often even citing some. Take, for example, archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx is often claimed to be a transitional form between dinosaurs and birds, but there are multiple problems with this claim. Problem number 1 is illustrated by world renowned bird expert, an Evolutionist himself, Alan Feduccia, who says that no amount of paleobabble is going to make archaeopteryx anything other than what it is: A fully-formed, non-dinosaurian, perching bird.
Almost as famous these days is Tiktaalik Rosae, which has been all but completely abandoned at the expert level, albeit for the wrong reasons. Logic dictates that Tiktaalik cannot be ancestral to tetrapods because Tiktaalik is not a tetrapod. Thus, we can produce a simple syllogism:
P1: Only tetrapods produce tetrapods. P2: Tiktaalik is not a tetrapod. C: Tetrapods are not ancestral to tetrapods.
Unfortunately, this is not the logic that caused experts to abandon Tiktaalik as ancestral to tetrapods. That happened when fossil footprints were found that Evolutionists considered to be older than Tiktaalik by several million years.
Nevertheless, at the popular level, Evolutionists continue to imagine Tiktaalik as a transitional form. In fact, imagined transitional forms tend to follow a pattern. When a new fossil is discovered, and claimed to be transitional, Evolutionists shout it from the rooftops. When it is inevitably shown to be overhyped, experts quietly retract it, allowing it to stay popular, and reinforcing the idea that Evolution has mountains of evidence. The narrative then switches from "we've found our missing links" to "there's so many of them, you just don't know about it yet."
But the initial joyous outcry as new links are produced only goes to show how much desperation hides behind the veneer of confidence in the meantime. The whole time Evolutionists claim they have their innumerable transitional forms, what they actually have is a deep hope that one day, they might find just one.
But finding one brings with it a whole new problem: When you find one, you create two necessary links on either side of it. This would seem to create an infinite regress. At least, that's how some Evolutionists argue. But this is actually illogical, as "innumerable" is an exaggeration.
Think of it this way: If the Lord ever blesses me with a grandson, he will be directly related to my grandfather. In the chain I just described, I am a "missing link". Now, if you find me, there are two missing links, my dad on one side, and my child on the other. But if you find my dad and my child, you have no more missing links.
Now, obviously, it's a lot more complicated when you expand the chain to a mythical multitude of millions of years. There are a lot more than five generations in that. Nevertheless, there are a finite number. If you believe you started with a dinosaur and ended with a bird, then somewhere in the middle, there should be a "dino bird".
And this is where faith comes in. See, absence of evidence is not usually evidence of absence (though of course there are exceptions). One cannot say "Evolutionists do not have their transitional forms, therefore Evolution didn't happen". Indeed, this is why I said it probably isn't the gravest objection to Evolution. However, what we can say is that, since there is a conspicuous absence of transitional forms, Evolutionists must rely on faith!
At the start of this article, we mentioned Hebrews 11:1, which tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. This does not mean, as some sneaky atheist tricksters have recently put it, that faith is "belief without evidence". Rather, it means belief without immediate sight. In fact, Hebrews 11 goes on to describe several examples of "faith heroes", all of whom saw God. What they didn't see was the fulfillment of His promises. Noah was told to build an ark to survive a flood he had never experienced. Abraham was promised descendants he could not count, not only because of their number, but because he would be long dead before he could count them. Even the Apostles, having seen the risen Lord, would not see the Kingdom of Heaven until they were martyred for His testimony.
Faith, then, is not belief without evidence. It is simply belief in that which you have not seen. Because of this, most of us have faith in the celestial bodies. I have never seen any other planet but our own, and even that I have only observed from standing on it. Neither have I seen the many great things upon it. Niagara Falls, the Great Pyramids, the Grand Canyon, I accept these things on faith.
Evolutionists have faith in Evolution. They did not see Evolution happen, and indeed could not. Aside from the fact it didn't happen, if it happened, it would have happened long before any of us were born. Thus, whether they like it or not, Evolutionists have faith in Evolution. The question then becomes whether it is more reasonable to place our faith in a blind, undirected process, or in a rational God?
A great many things compel any sane person to accept the latter, but many of those reasons fall quite short. For example, we know that language, such as DNA, can only come from a mind, but we cannot know, from this fact alone, which mind. Therefore, even though we can conclusively say Evolution is a myth, we cannot jump straight to Christianity.
What we can do, however, is look at the central claim. See, Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus is still in His grave, Christianity is DOA. By contrast, if Jesus really did relieve the Grim Reaper of his command, that gives His claims to be the one and only Creator the ultimate credibility. As I like to say, it's better to trust the one man who walked out of His grave than 8 billion who are heading to theirs.
Unlike Evolution, Jesus has a whole army of credible, corresponding witnesses. No one dug up a hole in a wall and suggested "hmm, I guess some guy got crucified, then rose to life again". No, rather than being based on inferences, the resurrection was directly observed by the same men whose written words we read of it from. Even setting aside divine inspiration, Matthew and John were direct witnesses to Jesus' life, both before and after the crucifixion. Luke, while he does not appear to have seen it himself, clearly consulted with those who did, in order to compile a report for a man named Theophilus. Mark, similarly, was very close with Peter, one of Jesus' more famous Apostles, and tradition holds that Peter may have even had a more direct hand in Mark's Gospel.
Of all testimonies found in Scripture, Paul's is perhaps the most incredible. Though he did not witness the resurrected Lord prior to His ascension, he was a part of Jesus' most notorious foes; the Pharisees. This means Paul may even have had an indirect hand in crucifying Jesus. Even if not, he assuredly had a hand in the deaths of many of His followers after the ascension. Yet, Paul willingly went from violent persecutor to devout martyr for Christ. For why? Because he met Him.
With these reliable testimonies, and indeed far more evidence than I would dare include in an article about transitional fossils, we can reasonably say that Christ is risen, and therefore, Christ did indeed create. We are not the descendants of monkeys! We are the descendants of Adam!
But with that common ancestor, we inherit a common problem: Sin. As Adam disobeyed the command of God, and received the promised death sentence, so also do we sin against God, and receive death as our wages.
But in Christ, God Himself became a son of Adam. However, He did not sin, as we do. Not once did Jesus do, say, or even think that which is displeasing to God. Jesus did not know sin. But He did know death. When His time came, Jesus was arrested, tried, and publicly executed via crucifixion. As He hung on the cross, He suffered the full penalty for sin, as though He, Himself, was a sinner. After this, He rose again.
Because Jesus received the penalty for sin, all who confess Him as the risen Lord can be rewarded as though they were righteous. Every sin we have ever committed by thought, word, or deed, can be forgiven, and we become new creations, who will one day inhabit the new Heaven, and the new Earth. So, you can go about your earthly life imagining you are nothing more than a monkey, destined to rot in the ground, until you finally end up in the ground and stand before God as a convicted felon. That is an option available to you. But the objectively better option is to confess that while you are worthy of such a conviction, we serve a God of grace, who rewards those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 1:6). If you do this, death has no more power over you than it had over Christ. You don't need much more intelligence than a monkey to figure out which is the better option.