Review: Tornado in a Junkyard                                                    

reviewed by T. C Pinckney                                                                               Vol. XIII, No. 5, May 2000

Tornado in a Junkyard, authored by James Perloff and published by Refuge Books, Arlington, MA, is written for the layman. Perloff begins with a short chapter recounting his move from staunch evolutionist to convictional creationist. Then, in a series of brief chapters he reviews the various arguments for and evidence opposing evolution. The book does not present original scientific work but brings together in one handy volume, topically arranged, each of the major "evidences" evolutionists cite and the much more reasonable creationist explanations.

One of the book's very valuable aspects is the large number of quotations from both creationists and evolutionists. For example, British philosopher and creationist G. K. Chesterton wrote, "It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything."

On the evolutionist side, note the following from p. 11:

Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, wrote in a personal letter:

I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader'?

I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived." I will lay it on the line -- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.

Please note that this is not merely an academic argument. If all is chance, there is no god. If there is God, creation is not by chance. (And notice that chance itself is not a thing. It has no being, no essence. Rather, chance is a only term we use to describe an effect whose cause we do not discern.) Thus, the creation-evolution debate is fundamental, for if evolution is true, the Bible becomes a fairy tale, Jesus was a madman or a myth, there is no absolute truth, no standard of good and evil, and certainly no heaven or hell. God had a reason for placing Genesis first in the biblical books. It sets the essential stage for all that follows.

I highly recommend Tornado in a Junkyard.