After that, I was presented to fossil records. The same NAS brochure states: "many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species.”
Niles Eldredge, an evolutionist, states that the fossil record shows, not that there is a gradual accumulation of change, but that for long periods of time, “little or no evolutionary change accumulates in most species”. Scientists dug and cataloged some 200 million large fossils and billions of small fossils. Many researchers agree that this vast and detailed record shows that all the major groups of animals appeared suddenly and remained virtually unchanged, with many species disappearing as suddenly as they arrived.
Richard Lewontin wrote that many scientists are willing to accept unproven scientific claims because they “have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.” (“Materialism,” in this case, refers to a theory that everything in the universe, including all life, came into existence without any supernatural intervention in the process.) Many scientists refuse even to consider the possibility of an intelligent Designer because, as Lewontin writes, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
In this regard, sociologist Rodney Stark is quoted in Scientific American as saying: “There’s been 200 years of marketing that if you want to be a scientific person you’ve got to keep your mind free of the fetters of religion.” He further notes that in research universities, “the religious people keep their mouths shut.”
To accept macroevolution as true, I have to prove to myself that agnostic or atheistic scientists will not let their personal beliefs influence their interpretations of scientific findings, that mutations and natural selection produced all complex life-forms, despite a century of research that shows that mutations have not transformed even one properly defined species into something entirely new, that all creatures gradually evolved from a common ancestor, despite a fossil record that strongly indicates that the major kinds of plants and animals appeared abruptly and did not evolve into other kinds, even over eons of time. This human nature factor is what left me certain about my current way of thinking, despite the many accusations of biased idealism, cognitive dissonance, misinformation and other many offensive terms referred to me and my dignity as a person, instead of what I believe.