"I'm fast losing faith in evolution"

9th March, 2007

Oh how I WISH you all could have been in my systematics (the study of the order of how things evolved) prac class today.  We were looking at a bunch of different plants - ferns, flowering plants (plants with flowers ), conifers, cycads (they look a bit like palms), and gnetales (no idea how to describe those) - and we had to figure out how they were similar and different to each other and so we can then draw a evolutionary tree for them.

WELL. So I have this Acacia (really important group of Australian trees, wattles are acacias), which comes under the flowering plants group, and I'm trying to figure out if their leaf type is considered 'advanced' or 'primitive'. It has simple leaves. So I ask the tutor. And here begins his story of 'really logical evolution'. Evolutionists believe that early/primitive plants had simple leaves and then some flowering plants, evolved the ability to grow compound leaves. Right, so my plant has primitive leaves, because they're simple, yeah?

Well, no, my tutor tells me, because when you look at acacias, ALL their young leaves are compound, and only when the tree gets older do they become simple. That means, to evolutionists, that acacias all started off with compound leaves, THEN evolved simple leaves AGAIN. Right, let's get this straight. Plants had simple leaves. Then some evolved compound
leaves, and then acacias evolved out of the compound leaf group, so ALL acacias had compound leaves. But THEN some acacias reverted BACK to simple leaves.

Welllll. Yes. Mostly. But then there's more, he tells me. Those acacias that went back to simple leaves. Wellll, some of them actually changed  AGAIN to compound leaves. WHAAAAT??? I'm left confused. So let me get this straight. All plants had simple leaves. Then some plants evolved compound leaves. Then acacias evolved, all of them had compound leaves. Then a whole bunch of Acacias evolved simple leaves again. And then some of those Acacias (eg. Acacia baileyana ) evolved their simple leaves into compound leaves. So Acacia baileyana changed its leaf shape 3 times since the beginning of evolution!? The  answer, in evolutionary theory, is; yes.

And that was only the tip of the systematics confusion and ambiguity I had to deal with today.

I have a better explanation for all of these. Plants were created.