The headlines are rarely silent for long these days on the subject of man's origins. Missing links seem to be the holy grail of palaeoanthropology, as if we are desperate to show that we arrived on this planet by pure chance. Of course, the Christian will recognise that God is Sovereign over all things, so many will assume that God must have used the processes of time and chance to create. Others argue that the Bible says God created in six days and since He is all-powerful-and-all-knowing, the Christian should simply believe it. But doesn't that put science and faith in conflict? A key element of this debate is the so-called "missing links".

The story of evolution attempts to explain the existence of the entire universe by natural processes through cosmic evolution (formation of stars and galaxies), geological evolution (formation of planets and earth in particular), chemical evolution (origin of first life), biological evolution (diversity arising from the first primordial cell) and finally, human evolution (the development of humans from a common ancestor with the apes).

But any account constrained to natural processes a priori excludes the possibility of a supernatural cause for the existence of everything. In other words, it is inherently atheistic because it assumes there is no God and this assumption becomes the axiom on which the entire philosophical construct of evolution rests. Christians who assume God used evolution do so because it is assumed that the science is irrefutably established. Surely the fossil record shows clear evidence of a gradual development of life forms from simple to complex over vast periods of time culminating in the arrival of human beings? If this is true, the Christian has no choice but to try and fit this history of life into the Bible. But is it true?

Charles Darwin's proposed mechanism for biological evolution, if correct, should have produced an unmistakable series of transitions from lower forms of life to higher forms preserved in the fossil record which is assumed to be a record in stone of the history of life over aeons of time. However, Darwin was well aware that the fossil record did not support his theory.

He wrote:

Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.

Darwin assumed that the incompleteness of the fossil record was the reason for this lack of evidential support but he assumed that as more and more fossils were found, the gaps would be filled. One hundred and fifty years later, millions of fossils have been found and catalogued and many classifications proposed to reveal the gradual development of living things over geologic time. Countless books and papers have been published including one where the author, British Museum of Natural History senior palaeontologist Colin Patterson, subsequently acknowledged to a reader: "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 ... I will lay it on the line — there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."

So the fossil record stands as a silent witness against the claims of biological evolution to this day. The anticipated links are conspicuous by their glaring absence! So why are there "missing links"? Could it be that the model of slow gradual development of living things from simple to complex is not true?

The answer lies in understanding what science is actually capable of telling us about our origins. All scientific experiments are conducted in the present. We are not able to make observations and conduct experiments in the past, particularly the distant past of so-called deep time where people speak of millions and even billions of years. The evidence we observe in the present is always interpreted in the light of what we believe about the past. We need to remember that the evolutionary story, as usually told, begins with the naturalistic assumption there is no God. But why should we believe the conclusions reached when they start from a faulty premise?

The Bible's account of history in the book of Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them in six normal-length days a matter of a few thousand years ago. Man was created on the sixth day of the Creation Week and so had no animal ancestor. The first man, Adam, rebelled against God and brought sin, suffering and death into the once "very good" creation. Evolution says death brought forth Adam, but the Bible says Adam brought forth death.

Every kind of living creature was created to reproduce after its own kind, according to Genesis. One kind of creature has never been observed to change into another kind. Indeed, the fossil record affirms that fully formed organisms "appear" abruptly without any transitional forms. Organisms do change in response to changing environments but only through the loss of genetic information and never through the gain of novel genetic information not already present in the genome. Adaptation, as this process is rightly called, is a downhill process, not an uphill one as required for one kind to change into another.

Genesis then devotes three whole chapters to describing a global watery disaster that wiped out all creatures with the breath of life in their nostrils except for those with Noah on the Ark. Massive sedimentary rock sequences on every continent of the globe stand as silent testimony to the truth of the Genesis account. And embedded in those rapidly laid sedimentary rocks are the remains of once living creatures, not arranged in the order in which they lived but in the order in which they were buried as a result of the Flood. The fossil record is mute testimony to the truth of the biblical record of history!

But why does all this matter? If the fossil record shows millions of years of death, disease, suffering, thorns, pain and extinction then that would mean God is the author of such things. But the Bible reveals that He is a God of love, mercy, compassion and faithfulness – hardly the god of evolution with its breathtaking cruelty, randomness and bold thirsty ways. As Professor David Hull observed in Nature magazine:

The God of the Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.

No. Death and suffering are the result of Adam's sin and are an enemy that will ultimately be defeated. Christians can join with Paul when he says "I am convinced that God is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day".

The missing links are conspicuously missing and their eloquent absence is consistent with the historical record of Genesis.