Elders are elected by the Church Voters. Our leader is Lee Kleinschmidt.

Special and general relativity have been considered by many as the supreme intellectual achievement of the human mind. The ten enormously complicated equations proving general relativity would fill a huge book.

According to Einstein matter is merely frozen energy. His famous equation, E=MC 2, means that a tiny amount of matter can be converted into a tremendous amount of light, heat, and power. All of his major predictions have been proven thousands of times by direct experiments. Every genuine scientific theory must make predictions that can be observed or measured.

Is the idea -- Darwinian evolution -- a genuine scientific theory? Have its predictions been observed or measured?

Evolution has been invoked to explain small changes as well as huge changes in a species. They are actually separate things: microevolution describes changes that can be made in a few small jumps, whereas, macroevolution describes very large jumps.

Microevolution is generally accepted by everyone. Artificial selection applied in animal and plant breeding works well among species. Adoptive variation or microevolution among species is natural and has been used by breeders and horticulturists for thousands of years.

Microevolution (natural change among a single species) can be observed all the time as we adjust to different conditions. When people immigrate to the United States, their children often increase in size when exposed to a high protein diet. When vaccinated, small changes occur in antibodies to protect us. When we feel "spring fever", our blood is adjusting to the heat. People moving to warmer climates gradually adjust. Bacteria exposed to an antibiotic can make minor changes to their proteins to resist death. It is interesting to note that these "super bacteria" are often wiped out when the antibiotic is removed and they are forced to compete with the original wild strain.

Darwin noticed microevolution because he bred bigger, smaller, faster, and different color pigeons. He also noticed small variations in the Galapagos finches,. as their beaks varied in size in relation to their ability to crack seeds during wet and dry spells. As later studies showed, the oscillation of their beaks from short to long and back again happened as the weather changed. Princeton University biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant are the latest and mo&t successful biologists to realize that no real long term change seemed to be occurring because of this oscillatory pattern which they observed for 30 years. Darwin might have been disappointed to hear this, as the finches always remained finches.

Adoptive variation or microevolution among species is perfectly natural. Evolutionary transition from species to species (macroevolution) has never been found. Where have I observed this? I have read countless books dealing with evolution, paleontology, geology, zoology, biology, biochemistry, genetics, statistics, etcetera. Lately I've been concentrating on the books of Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Stephan Jay Gould, and Neils Eldredge. They are the pillars of English and American evolutionary thought. As I am writing this, I have a dozen of their books scattered on the floor. I will be unorthodox and underline the titles of all of the books which I am quoting.

Darwin was dismayed by the fact that all leading paleontologists of his time disagreed with his ideas because the fossil record did not support gradual evolution. In fact, it showed just the opposite. Darwin also knew of the Cambrian explosion and the problems it would cause for his ideas.

Darwin writes in The Origin of the Species, "Why is not every geological formation full of intermediate links. Geology does not reveal any such finely-graduated chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection against the theory." Darwin says,"Ifwe confine our attention to anyone formation it becomes more difficult to understand why we do not find closely graduated varieties between species." DarWin laments, " ... the abrupt and sudden appearance of whole groups of species has been urged by paleontologists Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick as a fatal objection to my theory." Darwin cries out, " ... some of the difficulties are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being staggered ... Why, if species have descended from other species by fine graduations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?"

I would recommend The Origin of the Species to anyone. The book consists of fifteen chapters. The titles of chapters 6, 7, 10, and 15 are as follows: Difficulties of the Theory; Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection; On the Imperfection of the Geological Record; Recapitulation and Conclusion. Half of chapter 15 is dealing with the objections.

What other naturalist is so honest? No one is. Four of the fifteen chapters list countless objections to his own theory. It takes a great man to say, that he is proposing a theory but be careful - observation does not support it. Such as his remark in chapter 6, "But if we compare species, where they intermingle, they are generally as absolutely distinct from each other in every detail of structure."