Erosional features which resemble dried water flow channels are common on Mars, indicating that the planet may have had an environment more hospitable to life in its past.

4. Evolution and Mars

There are two central ideologies in science. One of them must be responsible for intellectually blinding scientists to the truth about life on Mars.

The first central ideology of science is the scientific method itself. But since the scientific method is all about looking at data, it can hardly be held responsible for blindness.

That leaves the second ideology: evolution.

Talk to certain scientists, and you'll hear that the scientific method and evolution are completely intertwined. There are actually two crucial discontinuities. The scientific method is based on experiment and observation, but evolution occurs under conditions where it cannot be experimented with or observed. And whereas the scientific method is impartiality itself, the theory of evolution starts with the biasing presumption that all phenomena emanate from physical matter.

Whether it's true or not, evolution has tremendous explanatory power. Our senses are grounded in the physical universe, and they can perceive no other. Evolution explains in terms of things we can see or know through our senses. We feel much more comfortable about that.

But now we've come to Mars. Something must keep scientists from accepting the truth about Mars. It must be something very central to the way they think. Evolution is the only available candidate ideology. So it must be evolution with which there is something wrong. But what's wrong with evolution? To answer that, we must first review what evolution says about the origins of the universe.

According to evolution, the universe began about twenty billion years ago. There was a tremendous explosion in space called 'the Big Bang.' This explosion consisted entirely of electromagnetic energy. After billions of years, some of this energy converted into matter. The matter condensed into stars, and through fusion transmutation higher elements were formed out of hydrogen. This material later condensed into planets around stars such as our Sun. The time this occured: approximately 4.5 billion years ago.

Because the worlds were formed from high-velocity meteor collisions, they were originally so hot they were liquid. Gradually the liquid cooled and the exteriors solidified. Vented gasses from the interior leaked out and formed atmospheres and oceans.

On Earth, organic molecules in the ocean danced together randomly and formed larger and larger chains. By chance, one of the organic molecule chains was able to duplicate itself, and soon produced countless copies. Sometimes, through error, the copy would be slightly different from the original. Most of the time, the 'mutant offspring' molecule could not even reproduce. But now and then, the mutant molecule proved to be more efficient and more complex than the original molecule.

So began the long climb toward the complexity of living organisms. As these organisms competed for the same resources, the less efficient perished, and the more efficient increased in numbers. This purely random process is called 'natural selection." Through mutation and natural selection, organic molecules became cells, and developed the sophisticated biological machinery of genes, chromosomes, and DNA. Sometime later they came to cooperate in colonies of cells, and member cells of these colonies specialized to become eyes, fins, claws, and hands. At the end of the evolutionary progression is humanity.

Evolutionists today agree that life first appeared on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago. It wasn't until about 2.3 billion years ago that life transitioned from single to multi-celled organisms. Much later, in 570 million BC, trilobytes and other simple marine life appeared. In 400 million BC, fish and amphibians and small reptiles appeared. Dinosaurs were born 225 million years ago, and died out about 65 million BC, possibly due to an asteroid collision with the Earth.

Mammals were around before the death of the dinosaurs, but only after did they come into their own. That brings us to humans. The first humanlike apes appeared about three million years ago, the first true humans about half a million years ago. Language was invented around 100,000 BC, and villages and civilization began around 8,000 BC. Actual recorded history begins about 3000 BC. Such is the evolutionary history of Earth. For Mars, similar processes were at work, but the evolutionary history of Mars varies because of the natural differences between the two planets. And therein lies the source of the conflict between evolution and life on Mars.

It starts with the primordial ocean. This is the great 'organic soup' that formed shortly after the crust solidified on both worlds, billions of years ago. But unlike the oceans of Earth, the single ocean of Mars did not stay around for long. Planetary scientists Jeffrey S. Kargel and Robert G. Strom state: "Based on the knowledge of how water behaves on Earth, scientists estimate that Mars may have had an Indian Summer, a warm, wet period that may have lasted for as long as one million years."[1] An entire ocean may not have been around for this long, but only "warm pools on the ruddy surface." They further add, "Biochemists believe that the formation of life from complex organic molecules probably takes something like 2 to 5 million years, perhaps less."

It's here that evolutionary theory collides with Martian fact. According to evolution, oceans are the 'primordial soup' where organic molecules combine to form life. The general rule is, the more water, the less time it takes for organic compounds to randomly combine along the path of greater complexity. Mars had much less water than Earth, its Great Northern Ocean only a sixth the size of Earth's oceanic domain. So while it would take 2 to 5 million years for life to evolve on Earth, it would require 12 to 30 million years for the same steps to occur on Mars. But the 'wet and warm' period of Mars lasted only one million years!

Assuming life somehow cleared this hurdle on Mars, it would then meet another. Evolutionary geology states that if Mars had an atmosphere thick enough to support life, it must have vanished too early for life to survive. NASA research scientist Christopher McKay explains:

On Mars, without plate tectonics to recycle the carbonate, the atmosphere would rapidly be depleted and the planet would have become too cold to sustain life. Estimates based upon the Antarctic dry valley lakes suggest that life could have persisted for about 700 million years after the mean temperatures fell below freezing. After that, it would have been "all she wrote" for life on Mars.[2]

On Earth, seven hundred million years is only a fraction of the time it took for single-celled algae to evolve. Martian life could have gone no further before the atmosphere depleted.

The pace of evolutionary progression on Mars raises another question about the evolution of intelligent life. Mars is a smaller world, with only a quarter the surface area of Earth. Less surface area means less vegetation, and so less support for an animal population. Fewer animals means fewer opportunities for genetic mutations. If one quarter the surface area means one quarter the rate of evolution, Martian life should still be evolving toward multi-celled algea. But Cydonia was not built by single-celled algae.

Earth and Mars, relative size.

Another Evolution/Mars difficulty is the coincidence of timing: that out of all these billions of years in the ages of the two planets, Martian civilization should arise and build monuments within a few thousand years of when civilization arose on Earth. We know the monuments must be no more than a few thousand years old because Martian windstorms are so strong they would erode anything older away. Carl Sagan estimated the windstorm erosion rate is as much as .1 inch per year.[3] At that rate, it would take only fifty thousand years to wipe the Cydonia Complex flat. Certainly the Face would become noseless after a mere few millennia!

An even more contemporary age for the monuments is confirmed by the latitude and 'Cydonia Slope' relationships investigated in chapter two. The axial tilt of Mars cycles from 12 to 38 degrees and back every hundred thousand years[4] -- one degree every two thousand years. Since the latitude and slope relationships are related to the axial tilt, they too change over time. Since these Cydonia relationships correspond to current values for the Martian moon system, the Cydonia Complex was likely constructed recently.

Out of billions of years of evolutionary history, what is the probability that Martian civilization would arise contemporary with Earth's, to within a couple thousand years? Dividing billions by thousands, we get a ratio of millions to one for odds. This is a real problem for evolution.

Even the artistic conventions of the Cydonia Complex present a problem for evolutionary theory. For evolutionists, it is highly improbable that the Face on Mars resembles a human face, because that implies that the Martians were human in appearance. Science fiction may speak of parallel evolution, but evolutionists themselves say that the random walk of genetic mutation on the road to intelligent life is not likely to be even remotely imitated on two given worlds -- especially worlds as environmentally different as Earth and Mars. Evolutionists point to all the branches which they perceive in the evolutionary tree leading to intelligent life, and see many possible diversions on the way to humanity. Given time and luck, dinosaurs might have evolved intelligence, or perhaps the gift of speech and civilization would have come first to the progeny of dolphins or whales, or even panda bears. Oxford zoology professor Richard Dawkins states, ". . . it is vanishingly improbable that exactly the same evolutionary pathway should ever be traveled twice. And it would seem similarly improbable, for the same statistical reasons, that two lines of evolution should converge on exactly the same endpoint from different starting points."[5]

Since the Face on Mars is a humanlike face, we do indeed appear to have two lines of evolution -- one on Earth and one on Mars -- converging on the same endpoint. Reality and evolution are what diverge.

Life couldn't originate on Mars. It couldn't survive there. It couldn't evolve fast enough. The monuments are too new. And they shouldn't look human. Evolutionary doctrine has tremendous explanatory power, so we can always explain these problems away. But that's not science, that's rationalization. Theories are supposed to predict things. Evolution predicts nothing about Mars.

We might try to let evolution 'off the hook' by allowing that perhaps somehow Earth human and Martian human are related biologically. Perhaps thousands of years ago, humans built spaceships and travelled to Mars. But rockets require the specialized efforts of thousands supported by the industrial economy of millions. We don't find the ruins or even the empty soda cans of this civilization.

What if Earth and Martian humans are actually from another world, perhaps entirely outside of our solar system, and they became marooned on Earth and Mars around the same time? That doesn't work either, because evolution claims humans are inextricably linked with the evolutionary history of Planet Earth.

All that's left is a Third Party. That is, another intelligent race entirely, voyaging among the stars, came to this solar system and Earth. They found humans on Earth and took some to Mars, where the humans served as slaves, pets, or laboratory specimens. Apparently, our environment (perhaps our higher gravity) was not hospitable to the Star Beings, because they never colonized Earth. Using their advanced technology, they engineered the climate of Mars into something hospitable for life. But then for some reason the Star Beings left, and Mars was abandoned. The humans were stranded. They built the Cydonia Complex to honor their 'space gods,' whom they associated with the Martian moons. And then, without planetary engineering to sustain it, the Martian environment reverted to its old frigid, airless self. The humans perished.

This is the position of writers such as Richard Hoagland and Zechariah Sitchin. It might be a marginal idea now, but if mainstream scientists are forced to admit the existence of life on Mars, this will probably be their best hypothesis. Unfortunately for evolutionists, there are still a few problems.

Radio telescopes have scanned the heavens for years searching for intelligent life. If civilizations among the stars are advanced enough and close enough to send spaceships here, then surely we should detect radio signals. Evolution predicts that millions of civilizations should have arisen in the galaxy before us. Our radio telescopes should be deafened by the cosmic radio communications chatter. Instead, the stars are silent.

And within decades we'll possess the technology to send human colonists to another star system aboard an interstellar space ark. A few hundred colonists on a new world would populate into the billions within a thousand years, their descendents sending out new space arks to other worlds. Even at one percent light speed -- which can be reached by detonating hydrogen bombs behind a large asteroid serving as space ark -- the entire galaxy could be populated within just a few million years.

If there are indeed millions of other intelligent species elsewhere in the galaxy, they should each have duplicated this feat by now. Earth should have been visited not once, but millions of times. The surface of our planet should be littered with interstellar expedition artifacts, our skies cluttered with their space probes.

In addition to the lack of communication and visitation, it is perplexing that we can't see interstellar civilizations. Advanced civilizations would have solar system space travel, at least. Our own space colonization plans include populating the asteroid belt, which could accomodate thousands of times the population of Earth. After the asteroids come the small moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and then the larger ones, and then perhaps we'd start thinking of disassembling planets themselves. There is no 'supertechnology' involved in this vision, simply imagine human population doubling and doubling every generation for thousands of years -- and then imagine all those people applying their collective economic will to a task.

Some twentieth-century Earth scientists are speaking of spherelike clouds that would consist of countless space colonies swarming around a central star. The bubble would be visible across light years. If millions of intelligent civilizations have followed this path before us -- then why can't we see their star spheres?

No signals, no spaceships, no artifacts. Maybe they're not out there.

So who put the Martians on Mars? Evolution doesn't have an answer.

When scientists encountered data from Mars that indicated intelligent life, they had a choice of rejecting the data or rejecting evolution. They rejected the data. Or rather, they 'reinterpreted' the data so that they could go on believing Mars was lifeless. This isn't something that happened in a corner, with a tiny group of individuals. The question of life on Mars has been a major point of discussion in modern science. All modern science now must face criticism. And evolutionary theory itself is in deep trouble.

But it's not true ' . . . the whole credibility of science is shot.' The scientific method works just fine, and would have predicted Martians -- if it had been used. But evolutionary theory is not applied science, and is not derived from the scientific method. It shouldn't be allowed to borrow authority from the social reputation established by the scientific method. It should stand on its own merits. Or failings.

It was not on the sands of Mars that evolutionary theory broke down for the very first time. It had broken down long before that, covering up with rationalizations whenever data disputed prediction.

Maybe it's time to look at that record, too.