Rating: 
Summary: My Favorite Creationist Quote Book
Review: "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!" is my favorite creationist quote book. Dr. Gish is a master of turning the evolutionists own words against them. He goes step by step, from amoeba to man, documenting the altogether missing links in the fossil evidence for organic evolution. This book is an excellent starting point for anyone questioning the Darwinian religion.
I have heard many people over the years complaining that Dr. Gish has quoted authors "out-of-context." For my own knowledge, I spent the better part of one summer tracking down my own copies of the material quoted in this book. After accumulating about 500 sheets of photocopies and many old used books (it's amazing some of the things university libraries discard), I could not find a single author Dr. Gish misrepresented. None, nada, zero, zilch, zip. All of them believe evolution to be a fact, but they also believe that the real "hard evidence" is to be found in other specialties, not their own.
After finishing this book, only a doctrinaire materialist can walk away comfortable in his belief that evolution is a scientific theory. Regardless of your position on the subject, Dr Gish has assembled a thought-provoking polemic against evolution. The truth is laid bare for all to see. The emperor Darwin has no clothes--deal with it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As food for thought, I would like to leave the reader with two interesting tidbits I discovered while verifying the source material for this book...
"Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms. A knowledge of paleontology is, therefore, a prerequisite; only paleontology can provide them with the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms. Neither the examination of present beings, nor imagination, nor theories can serve as a substitute for paleontological documents. If they ignore them, biologists, the philosophers of nature, indulge in numerous commentaries and can only come up with hypotheses. This is why we constantly have recourse to paleontology, the only true science of evolution. From it we learn how to interpret present occurrences cautiously; it reveals that certain hypotheses considered certainties by their authors are in fact questionable or even illegitimate."
"Evolution of Living Organisms"
Pierre-Paul Grassé
(New York: Academic Press, 1977), p. 4
"Paleontologists disagree about the speed and pattern of evolution. But they do not--as much as recent publicity has implied--doubt that evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution simply does not depend upon the fossil record.
...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationst, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation. This does not mean that the theory of evolution is unproven.
So just what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the "fossil evidence", that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy."
"Who doubts evolution?"
Mark Ridley
New Scientist, Vol. 90, Jun. 25, 1981. pp. 830, 831
Rating: 
Summary: Propaganda
Review: A sad, woefully out of date and now entirely irrelevant attempt to fan the steadily dying embers of anti-evolutionism. Gish's book has been slightly updated from its predecessor, but this just brings him into the 19th century rather than the 21st. A variety of his claims such as those about Precambrian and Cambrian fossils are just plain false and the rest is largely an assortment of dated and out of context quotes that are stock-in-trade for hardcore creationists, but which are just pointless obfuscation akin to editing the Ten Commandments into "thou shalt...kill." I urge people who want to examine Gish's claims to look it up for yourself -- the fossils he claims don't exist have been known since the 1940's and were even illustrated for Scientific American more than 30 years ago. How could Gish miss such well known sources that exist in any public library? Heavy denial just won't change the fact that virtually no scientists of the hundreds of thousands in the world take this kind of stuff at all seriously so Gish is merely attempting to paint a subject he personally dislikes as some kind of "X-Files-ish" conspiracy. There is a reason no oil company in the world uses the "flood geology" Gish argues for -- it just simply doesn't work.
Rating: 
Summary: A good source, but not infallible.
Review: Although the first half of the book is very useful, the section dealing with paleoanthropology is not very reliable. For example, Gish STILL believes that homo erectus was 100 percent ape, while it clearly cannot be. In fact, fellow creationist Marvin Lubenow in "Bones of Contention" believes homo erectus to be 100 percent human, which, I believe is a much more believable assessment, as the characterisitics of H.E. fall in the "increasing" range of modern humans. Despite a few errors such as these, however, I found the book to be rich in facts. While evolutionists do not agree on all things, I do not think it is fair to discredit this book and all the material it contains because the author is a creationist. Donald Johansen and Richard Leakey may disagree on the role that homo habilis may have played in human evolution, but that does not mean one of them is filled with "wicked" lies. Because Gish is a creationist, many have responded in this way. Furthermore, as I read the reviews people have written (on Amazon), I cannot help but question the grounds by which many make their claims against the book. I continuously see reviews that say Gish is a liar. It is one thing to make a claim like that, but it is another to actually document and show why this is so. One remark of the book I continue to hear over and over is the repeated claim that Gish believes and states that the precambrian rocks do not contain fossils. While this is true of his 1972 version of the book, this print is updated (1995), and this claim is no longer made. Furthermore, Gish even argues with very good reasoning, that the presence of precambrian fossils makes the scenario even worse for evolution. This is because it puts a damper on the idea of the transitional forms leading up to the cambrian having been too soft to fossilize. Even if the conditions were not good enough for a period of time, the gap is too big--roughly 3 or so billion years. Furthermore, the invertebrates of the ediacaran fauna suggest that soft-bodied organisms can indeed fossilize quite well. So then, the discovery of microorganisms in the precambrian actually add fuel to his arguments, as it creates a gap that will probably never be filled. Overall, Fossils Still Say NO! is a great source for those interested in the creation/evolution debate, but other sources should be used and researched along with it...I also tend to think Gish's tone throughout the book is very blunt and biased, but that doesn't necessarily mean his views are incorrect. If you read the book, do not read it from an "Evolution is true, PERIOD" standpoint,but rather be willing to acknowledge, based on the material provided, that supernatural creation is certainly a possibility.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating & thought provoking book
Review: Dr. Duane Gish has presented a serious challenge to those who tout the fossil record as proof for evolution. The book is a refreshing and careful review of the usual evolutionary presumptions and half-truths regarding the fossil record, that has left many hard-core evolutionists stumbling. The fossil record has long been upheld as the Golden calf of humanism, but this particular god blows a great deal of smoke, but no thunder. The facts are clearly laid out in Gish's book; A) there are absolutely no transitional forms of any kind in the fossil record, B) many so-called ape-human fossils are either fully human or fully ape. And many of our alleged ape-ancestors were contemporary with one another; C) Many out-of-place fossils are found in strata long before they supposedly evolved. In Short, Gish has written a very objective and revealing tome, and one that any thinking person ought to read before accepting evolutionary presumptions and theories as scientific "fact."
Rating:
Summary: A good case study in poor intellectual practices.
Review: Firstly, I should say that I am a born-again Christian, and do subscribe to the notion that there is an ultimate creator. I do not subscribe to the young-earth creationist belief. Having read Coppedge's "Evolution: Possible or Impossible", "It Couldn't Just Happen", "Scientists Confront Creationists", and "The Creationism Controversy", and having browsed the websites of several creationist organizations as well as the Talk Origins site, I thought I would read Gish , as he along with Henry Morris are considered by most to be the most important and influential young-earth creationists. My overall impression is that the objections to Gish that are well-rehearsed in many places are justified. The biggest problem is the classic "false dichotomy." Gish claims to be able to show that evolution is false, therefore young-earth creationism must be true. Even if Gish could prove that evolution was false, this would not necessarily mean his brand of creationism was true. One would have to evaluate Gish's creation model independently to see if it holds up under scrutiny. Gish's tactic is essentially like saying in a legal setting that if we can prove defendant A is innocent, then we would be justified in picking anyone we like off the street to be defendant B and concluding, without even having a trial, that B must be guilty. Gish spends much of the book arguing that there are no transitional forms, and that these forms must be produced by evolutionists before they can conclude that their theory is worthy. Certainly many evolutionists would argue and have argued that a multitude of transitional forms have been found, and that Gish is either unaware of them or deliberately ignores them. However, even granting that transitional forms do not currently show sufficient continuity to justify evolution, this would not falsify evolution. Gish does not say anything at all about how rare or common fossilization is. He implies by his arguments that most species that have ever existed must have been fossilized in sufficient numbers for us to have already found them. This is ridiculous. Biologists estimate there are currently about 2 million known species alive today, and only 250,000 different species have been found in the fossil record. From the species that do exist in the fossil record, we can infer that a typical species lasts a few million years. Even if we only assume 100 million years of life on earth, there would have been many millions of species that have existed over time. It is reasonable to assume that we have found only a small percentage of these in the fossil record. Given this, it is understandable that the fossil record will have substantial gaps. This doesn't seem to me to be at all inconsistent with evolution. Also, Gish repeatedly asserts because the gaps in the fossil record are inconsistent with evolution, the fossil record thus supports creationism. He often says "just as the creation model would predict" after citing the fossil record's gaps. If there is one thing that his creation model would predict about the fossil record, it's that all the species that are alive today should be found throughout all the geological strata, and even Gish seems to acknowledge that this is not the case. Others have claimed that Gish has many inaccuracies. I certainly can't evaluate all of these claims, but will comment on one very glaring falsehood. Gish claims that the geologic column is based on evolutionary theory. This is false, as the geologic column as first developed by Lyell and others predates Darwin by a good 50 years. It is, in fact, not based on any biological theory at all. The dating of the rocks is based partly on radiometric dating, which may not be perfect, but is commonly understood to be very reliable in a statistical sense, and certainly would not be off by the order of magnitudes necessary for an earth of less than 20,000 years of age. To the extent that the fossil record is involved, it is only contributes the basic fact that fossils of species A are nearly always below fossils of species B, etc. Again, Gish is either unaware of this, or has deliberately twisted the facts to his own ends. Gish tends to depend a great deal on quotations from those he refers to as evolutionists, trying to show that evolutionists admit to the weakness of the fossil evidence for the Theory of Evolution. Not being an expert on who is who in the world of evolutionary biology, it is hard for me to say how representative these quotes are of the general thinking of biologists. Even if they are, however, they really do not say very much about whether evolution is true or not. In my humble opinion, Gish's arguments are woefully inadequate and illogical. I certainly would not recommend this book as having any intellectual merit. If you are looking for arguments in support of creationism in general, I would say that Hugh Ross' Reasons to Believe website has much more intellectual integrity than Gish. In fact, Ross does a good job of debunking many of the young-earth creationist positions, including the world-wide flood. An objective reader should also consult the Talk Origins website where some of Gish's tactics of misquoting or selectively quoting sources, as well as misrepresenting or selectively including evidence from the fossil record are discussed.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore what the first reviewer said!
Review: I'm a Christian, and I found this book very helpful because I used to be an anthropology student. All day long for 2 years I had Darwinism and evolution stuffed down my throat, since these are the bases of modern anthropology. Sorry! I was grateful to find this book. It told me there were other scientists who felt as I did, that evolution just isn't plausible, and it provided PHYSICAL EVIDENCE to that end. It was just exactly what I was looking for. I KNOW they've never found any "simplex organisms" or "missing links." It's because they simply don't exist. Since so many of my peers believed the Bible was simply a collection of stories handed down over time that had nothing to do with them, it was great to fight fire with fire and show them up with some scientific evidence that backed CHRISTIANITY up for a change. The book is refreshing, but very technical. A small drawback is that it assumes its readers are anthropology majors. But don't let that or the first reviewer dissuade you! Read it for yourself!
Rating:
Summary: Sad
Review: One has to wonder if Mr Gish is truly as ignorant as his ideas and conclusions present him to be, or whether he is deliberately misleading a gullible and traditionally undereducated Creationist audience. I tend to think the latter, since he so cleverly distorts and manipulates the overwhelming evidence for evolution. Unfortunately most Creation fundamentalists believe that if you intone a belief with enough frequency, it eventually becomes 'the truth'. Pretty transparent stuff.
Rating:
Summary: The book of lies~!
Review: Shame on Gish. He once again throws together a manipulative pack of lies and distortions (and he knows it), with no factual evidence supporting his obsured ideas. I just can't see how this disgusting man still holds any bit of sway with anybody, but then again I've never undergone the misfortune of being brainwashed by a fundie church. Shame on you Gish, SHAME ON YOU~!
Rating:
Summary: Even my 8th grade science class found a bunch of mistakes!
Review: This book is excellent in presenting how the fossil record supports creation. The fossil record shows that all animal and plant species were fully-formed and complete (i.e. not partially-evolved or partially-formed) from the very beginning which is powerful scientific evidence that living things came into existence as complete which can only support creation. For those who are interested I also have a book on the subject. The title of my book is "Origins?" and the ISBN is 1579215769. My book is sold here at amazon.com also.
Rating:
Summary: The Plain Truth
Review: This book is refreshing. I've been studying creation/evolutiontheories for some time now, and Evolution: The fossils still say no!puts it to rest. This book is not just the opinions of the author, but a well researched book with plenty of quotes by evolutionists themselves admitting that there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. Here is a quote from the book by G.G. Simpson, a devout evolutionist: "This regular absense of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenom, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate. A fortiori, it is also true of the classes, and of the major animal phyla, and it is apparently also true of analogous categories of plants." (pg. 334 taken from Simpson's book Tempo and Mode in Evolution pg. 107) Also the later half of the book is dedicated to the theory of human evolution, and gives evidence that australopithecus lived in trees and did not walk upright like modern man. The book also gets into how modern man lived along side his supposed ancestors. It seems the authors of some of the negative reviews on this book are threatened by the truth. Other interesting books: The Genesis Flood by: Whitcomb & Morris; Bones of Contention by: Lubenow; and Evolution and Christian Faith by: Davidheiser
|
