The New PhyloCode

“Beware of the Heffalump!”

The great Swedish biologist, Carl von Linne' is called the “Father of Taxonomy.” He lived from 1707 to 1778. He is more often known by his Latinized name Carolus Linnaeus. His greatest works were Species Plantarum (1753) and Systema Naturae (1758). With modifications made over the years, it is his method of hierarchical classification and custom of binomial nomenclature that has dominated the field of biology for the past 250 years.

Taxonomy is the science of classification; laws and principles covering the classification of objects; especially the classification of animals and plants into kingdoms, phylum, classes, orders, families, genuses, species and varieties. Linnaeus' system became the basis for the modern systems of the International Codes of Zoological or Botanical Nomenclature (ICZN and ICBN).

The system developed by Linnaeus was based upon his Christian faith and his belief that the Creator of the Bible was an orderly God. He believed that each kind of creature was a unique creation by God and therefore we should be able to pigeonhole each kind of creature as a specific species and group them by their kind. Obviously, the Biblical account in Genesis was the foundation for his thinking and his system.

In the preface of a late edition of his book Systema Naturae he wrote: “The Earth's creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of Nature by Man alone.” Linnaeus believed that the study of nature would reveal the Divine Order of God's creation, and it was the naturalist's task to construct a "natural classification" that would reveal this Order in the universe.

Today, however, there are evolutionists who believe that this system is no longer valid. They believe that the Linnaen-style classification system was fine for the static, divinely created universe of the 18th century, but it does not work for them in their constantly evolving, constantly changing world of today where there are no fixed points of reference.

For this reason, in Paris during the summer of 2004, a group of 70 like-minded evolutionists convened the first meeting of the International Society for Phylogenetic Nomenclature. They elected Dr. Kevin de Queiroz as their first president. For the next four days they debated the conventions for a new code of classification and proposed names and definitions for organisms under this new proposed code. The name for their new system? It will be called the PhyloCode.

To an evolutionist, to classify something by its phylogeny means to attempt to determine the “pedigree” of a species - the branches of the ancestral tree of species from which the current species derive. A related species is derived from a supposed common ancestor. There are two kinds of phylogenies - branching, or divergent, phylogenies, and merging, or reticulate, phylogenies. Hybridization of two species is a case of reticulation if the result is a viable and reproductively persistent form.  Phylogeny deals with the evolutionary relationships within and between taxonomic levels, particularly the patterns of lines of supposed evolutionary descent.

There are key words that are used within this field of endeavor. These are: Phylogenetics - the taxonomical classification of organisms based on their degree of supposed evolutionary relatedness: and, Phylogenetic tree - a variety of dendrogram (tree branching diagram) in which organisms are shown arranged on branches that link them according to their relatedness and supposed evolutionary descent.

Evolutionists believe that one type of biological life form transforms into another type of biological life form over time.  In essence, they believe that one type oozes into another type by random chance over millions of supposed years, through what are commonly called “missing links.” If this is true, then there are no real specific kinds in nature and, according to them, you cannot pigeonhole life forms. Therefore, they need a system that will allow them to classify organisms according to their worldview.

In a series of papers they wrote between 1987 and 1994, Drs. de Queiroz and Gauthier stated that this new system was necessary in order “to complete the Darwinian revolution” with a nomenclature based in evolutionary theory.

This concept is nothing new. Evolutionists have been doing the same thing since before the time of Charles Darwin. This is only another attempt to make an old and unworkable system sound more scientific to the general public. It is really nothing more than the older version, called cladistics, wrapped up in another wrapper.

Cladistics is a system of biological taxonomy based on the quantitative analysis of comparative data and used to construct cladograms (diagrams showing a rank: a logical order or an orderly sequence of animals or plants, presumably showing how one changed into the next, then into the next, etc.) summarizing the assumed evolutionary phylogenetic relations and evolutionary history of groups of organisms.

This is the favorite method used by evolutionists to prove evolution true. It does not matter if they are dealing with dinosaurs, butterflies or roses, this is their favorite method of proving evolution to be true. But, it is the second worse method of proof in science!

What is wrong with Phylogenetics, Cladistics and the PhyloCode? The ability to rank objects; to put then in a logical order or a logical sequence, proves nothing about their heritage. When evolutionists place a series of skulls in a line: gibbon, chimpanzee, orangutan, gorilla, human; and they say; “You see how one evolved from the other?” What is the correct answer?

We have all seen Hollywood-made special effects movies or cartoons where one creature morphs, is transformed from one kind into another kind into another kind, right in front of our eyes. We saw a person become an animal, or an animal become a person. It all looked real because it was expertly done, even though we knew it was not real.

If you can make a special effects movie in your mind, then when evolutionists show you a series of skulls, or whole creatures, lined up by size and shape and say; “You see how one evolved from the other?” The answer is, “Yes,” if you fill in the gaps in-between with your own imagination. If you can make a special effects movie in your mind, then you can see how one evolved into another.

But, what is the correct answer? The correct answer is “No!” All I see are skulls or creatures lined up in a logical order or sequence by size and shape. Using this method: if I place a unicycle next to a bicycle, next to a motorcycle, next to an automobile; did I just prove that automobiles evolved from unicycles? No, but that is a logical order or sequence.

If I take 1,000 people and line them up by their height, it only proves that people come in different heights and I have the intelligence to do it. If I line the exact same people up according to the month and day of their birth only, I will get a different sequence of the same people. The only thing that this proves is that people are born on different days of the year and I have the intelligence to do it. In either case, lining them up by their height or by their month and day of birth, did I prove anything about their heritage? No! Ranking proves nothing about heritage.

I make an open challenge to any evolutionist. Give me 1,000 skulls of 1,000 different species of animals and, using this method, I will demonstrate that apes evolved into whales, or that apes evolved into cows! Ranking proves nothing about heritage!