Problems with Evolution
I was once doing a debate entitled Evolution vs. Creation at a local college. As the debate went on, my opponent seamed to have an answer for all my objections. Like a good atheist, he had a "theory" to explain everything we see in nature. Close to the end of the debate, I posed this question; Can you tell me what is the strongest evidence against the Theory of Evolution? And he said that he couldn't come up with an answer because there is none. I responded by reminding him that I have a stack of books at home eight feet tall, all from great scientists who have exposed some of the problems with evolution. My opponent here was not unlike most atheists. They've only studied one side of the argument and ignore any data that is in conflict with the theory.
Much of what they do is cherry picking as well. For example, I was watching a show on Discovery recently about the Venus Fly Trap. This is the plant with a flower that closes on insects and eats them. The host was explaining that millions of years ago these trees were going extinct because bugs were destroying them so they had to develop a way to survive. Evolution lead us to the fly trap, which protected the tree from insects. Sounds good. The problem, of course, is how do you explain fruit trees which obviously attract bugs to their fruit?
Since evolution is so ingrained in Western culture and because it has become so antithetical to creation, we dedicate an entire session to it in our course Introduction to Apologetics. Below you will find exerpts from that session and some of the problems we discuss. Our goal is that the Christian can speak intelligently about the subject, so when your child comes home from school with questions, you can properly answer them. During the session, we do not introduce new interpretations of the science, rather we use existing popular science and expose its many flaws. By way of disclaimer, the information below may or may not be our interpretation of the science, which is irrelevant. We are simply using their interpretations because I have found that this is a better method of debating them, than what many creationists do by introducing their version of the science. Then all you do is get into an endless debate about who's science is better.
One more note that we discuss in class: we truly believe that the evolution/creation debate is futile with atheists because it usually becomes a long dragged out process of trying to refute some of the world's most popular scientists. This information is best used on the Christian who is being seduced by evolution. For the atheist who believes that evolution disproves God, we recommend that you focus on divorcing evolution from God, demonstrating that these are two very difference endeavors. Once you accomplish this, you can speak entirely on the evidence for the existence of God.
The Origins of Life
The Theory of Evolution begins with the emergence of single celled life which we know inhabited the earth in large numbers for a very long time. To date, evolutionists have failed to provide a credible theory on how single celled life could have emerged by natural causes, not because they haven't tried for decades but because singled celled life is as complex as a modern city, except that it fits in the head of a needle, making it vastly more precise. Both contain:
“The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.” Michael Denton, Agnostic and Microbiologist
Evolution and Time
Evolutionists claim that we cannot witness evolution because there is not enough time, as it takes millions of years and thousands of generations. Yet, the most extensive and longest running investigation has been undertaken by Richard Lenski of Michigan State University, who has been continuously growing cultures of E. coli in his laboratory since the late 1980s and monitoring the facets of their evolution. Because they have a short life span, the number of generations he has produced has approached 50,000. Lenski’s investigation is large enough and long enough to give solid, reliable answers to many questions about evolution. Nonetheless, all of the mutations identified to date can readily be classified as either modification-of-function or loss-of-function. Behe, M.J. 2010. Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations, and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution.’ Quarterly Review of Biology 85.
While the study has demonstrated that bacteria does mutate and develops resistance to drugs, it has yet to produce anything but more bacteria. This of course is not evolution, which would require new advanced species. More importantly, the study demonstrates that in fact, mutations that produce advantages, essential to the evolutionary model, are rare occurrences.
Random Mutations
In the most open-ended laboratory evolution experiment (Lenski 2004), in which no specific selection pressure was intentionally brought to bear, all of the adaptive mutations that have been so far identified have either been loss-of-function or modification-of-function mutations, and there is strong reason to believe that most of the modification-of-function mutations diminished protein activity. Behe, M.J. 2010. Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations, and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution.’ Quarterly Review of Biology 85, 419-445
With almost all mutations recorded being detrimental to the species rather than beneficial, it is more likely that species would have gone extinct rather than evolving into more complex creatures. More specifically, if 51% of random mutations are detrimental to the species the likelihood is that the species dies out. Beneficial mutations must exceed the 51% threshold for the Theory of Evolution to be credible because so much of the theory rest on random mutations. And yet you could not find a study today where the number of beneficial random mutations in any species exceeds 10%.
Imagine a manual for assembling a child’s wagon. Would randomly changing letters in the manual improve the manual? Would duplicating sections of the manual improve it? Clearly these types of changes would destroy information rather than create new, better information. Biological evolution assumes that such random changes not only could change the wagon, but these random “mutations” would evolve the wagon into a car and eventually a plane, and then even a space shuttle. Cornell University geneticist Dr. John Sanford, Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome
Human DNA and Monkeys
What about the evolutionist’s claim that our DNA is 95 to 98 percent similar to monkeys? Can changes in the DNA sequence bring about new species? No, because the differences at the chemical base level are still in the millions. The DNA in a zebra fish is 92 percent similar to monkeys yet you never see them swimming together.
“Every living species has its own unique, matching number of chromosomes. An animal with 13 cannot mate with a species with 12 or 14 chromosomes. Whenever that rare mismatch does happen, such as a horse mating with a donkey to produce a mule, the offspring are usually sterile or monster-like….If we are descendants of amphibians, which have 13 pairs of chromosomes, not only did the original 13 chromosomes change, but 10 chromosomes, with approximately 130 million chemical bases on each, were added. That would be like replacing half the books in the Library of Congress and then adding ten new wings full of books, one text at a time, in correct numerical order…all without a plan. All perhaps done with a blind librarian.” Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, What Darwin Didn’t Know
Evolving Microbes?
In November 2004 National Geographic published an article by David Quammen titled “Was Darwin Wrong?” Early on, he assures us that in fact Darwin was not wrong because the evidence is overwhelming. He cites the best research, including the Peter Gant study which we’ve already discussed, along with the discredited pepper moth studies. Here’s his best evidence: “The capacity for quick change among disease-causing microbes is what makes them so dangerous to large numbers of people…By natural selection they acquire resistance to drugs that should kill them. They evolve. There’s no better or more immediate evidence supporting Darwinian theory than this process of forced transformation among our inimical germs…These antibiotic-resistant strains represent an evolutionary series, not much different from the fossil series tracing horse evolution from Hyracotherium to Equis.”
The problem of course is that they are still microbes, rather than new organisms, which is the claim of evolutionists. Remember that no one is denying micro evolution, which is change within the species. To claim that micro-evolution leads to new divergent species is like saying I can flap my arms, therefore I can fly like an eagle. It is an astronomical leap between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, and evolutionists are a long way from making their case.
Information Theory
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the heat in the universe always moves from order to disorder. Information Theory, its close cousin, demonstrates that over time, information will always diminish rather than advance. For example, the further we go back in time, the harder it is to piece together archeological findings because information is diminishing. If you close your garage door and come back ten years later, the information you had when you left would be affected. Colors fade, weather erodes, bugs damage, etc. It has been empirically proven that information moves from order to disorder.
Yet for evolutionary biology to hold true, the opposite would have to happen. Massive advances in molecular information would have to surge forward, but that’s never been empirically tested and affirmed. It seems logical to conclude that a strictly materialistic world could never produce a well-written book, much less a huge library of books which is required in the DNA sequences of every living organism including bacteria.
Dr. James M. Tour
Dr. James M. Tour is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University. He has authored or co-authored 489 scientific publications and his name is on 36 patents.
…I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me? … Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me. http://www.jmtour.com
Problems with Natural Selection
Is it plausible for a faster, more muscular gazelle to survive over its slower peers? Of course. Is it possible that he can pass on that advantage to the next generation? Of course. And is it also possible that all the slower gazelles will become dinner for the nearby lion pride? Of course. Anything under the sun is possible. A question remains: “Is it probable?”
Under the Darwinian paradigm, the mutation does not only make the species better, it makes it different. The advantage has to account for a transition from, say, an arm to a wing. The problem of course is that such a transition would produce so many wing-arms that the new feature would be a huge disadvantage through the transitional stages. The likelihood is that the mutated species would die. A wing-arm doesn’t fly, and it can no longer grip branches. The example used in many text books is the four winged fruit fly, which of course, can't fly.
Natural selection can only select for advantages. Disadvantages die off because they cannot survive. Therefore, to move from one species to another requires successive advantageous mutations with very few disadvantageous mutations. Once an advantage shows up, then we have another huge hurtle, and that would be passing it on to your offspring. Remembering that a mutation is a DNA copying error. That is, as the DNA molecule continues throughout every species life to make new cells, they are carbon copies of our existing genome. A mutation is just an error in that coping process. The odds of passing on a copying error is low, the probability of it not dissipating over multiple breeding cycles if it is passed on is remote. And yet the entire theory rests on this proposition.
Survival of the Fittest
The idea of “survival of the fittest” as a theory is weak at best, because the phrase uses circular reasoning to make its point. It even lacks the ability to make predictions. In other words, we know it’s the fittest because it survived. Today the earth is inhabited by super species which made the evolutionary cut. But is a cow, an armadillo, or a frog really the fittest?
Evolutionists will take hours explaining how the markings on the leopard gave it an advantage and thus it was able to survive. The problem, of course, is how do they explain a zebra which can be spotted from miles away? The evolutionists cherry pick examples to make their case.
Other advantages
Why do we see so many advantages in the different species that don’t necessarily advance survival? For example, although I find my fingernails and toenails advantageous, I hardly think their absence would lead to my extinction. My eyebrows protect my eyes from glare, but once again, I hardly think I need them for survival. The evolutionists would argue that it is simply a random mutation, but I’m thinking a random event would put a fingernail on my forehead, not perfectly on every finger. We can fill volumes of books with such example, leaving us with more questions than answers.
Disadvantages
And then what about those features which are disadvantageous; why are they still around? Why do people still have bad eyesight? Shouldn’t they have died of starvation or war? Why do some humans have light skin? Shouldn’t they have died off from cancer? And why did hominids stand upright, slowing them down in the process? The point is this: a legitimate model would account for such obvious shortcomings.
Common Objection to Creation
One of the biggest objections to the creation model is the argument from perfection. If creationists are right, why do we have an appendix and cancer? Many atheists complain about the design of our digestive system and so forth. We are not perfect and therefore cannot possibly be the product of an all-knowing creator.
But design does not imply perfection. My car is the obvious product of design. It has many features that are complex and have a purpose. But occasionally my car breaks due to something that could have been designed better. Does that mean my car was not the product of a purposeful architect, engineer, and designer, but rather the product of an explosion in a steel mill? Of course not, design does not imply perfection. An artist can paint a beautiful portrait, but the fact that it's not perfect is no reason to think the painting is the product of a paint spill.
Problems with the Fossil Record
Charles Darwin: “The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on earth, must be truly enormous. 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 gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” Charles Darwin, Origins of Species
While the fossil record does indicate that species became larger and more complex over time, this is not evolution. Evolution is gradualism. A fossil record that supports evolution would show a very gradual progression from one species to another with the corresponding intermediary. An intermediary or transitional form is a species that lived between two other species which link the two and served as a transition between the two. Two factors must be present to qualify as an intermediary:
The number of transitional forms discovered will vary depending on who you ask and with the measure that one uses. The range is anywhere between 100 and 5,000 intermediaries. Is this sufficient to support evolutionary theory? Well over the course of earth's history, the planet has seen over 3.5 million species. How many intermediaries would this require? At minimum, 3.5 million, and likely more because many species need hundreds if not thousands of mutations to emerge as a link between previous ancestors. Molecular biologist Michael Denton, M.D., Ph.D. notes, “The infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin.”
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” More specifically he notes, “The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1) Status. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; Morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2) Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed. Steven J. Gould, Harvard paleontologist and the leading evolutionist
David Berlinski, Mathematician, philosopher, biochemist
What do you have to do to change a cow into a whale and still retain a similar breathing apparatus. Essentially everything about the cow has to change. We have a sense of the numbers. Anytime the sciences avoid numbers, it is immersing itself in an unavoidable miasma. Skin has to change, breathing apparatus have to change, a diving apparatus has to be put in place, the eyes have to be protected, hearing has to be altered, salivary organs have to change, feeding mechanisms have to change. The calculations are not hard, I stopped at 50,000 changes. All these changes are coordinated. What does this suggest we should see in the fossil record? An enormous plethora of animals; intermediaries. That won’t solve all problems, but at least it will put it in the ballpark of a quantitative estimate.
Archaeopteryx – Missing Link?
In our public textbooks, Archaeopteryx is still publicized as the missing link between birds and reptiles and is often called the first bird, having lived between 125 million and 165 million years ago. About the size of a modern bird, it was covered in feathers and had small wings and a long tail, along with other birdlike features such as a wishbone and a reverse big toe. First impressions would indicate that such a creature would add credibility to the idea of a missing link, as the feathers alone had only been found on one dinosaur around that period.
Problem: nothing leading up to Archaeopteryx remotely resembles such an organism with feathers and wings, and we don’t see birdlike species for tens of millions of years after Archaeopteryx went extinct. Because it stands alone with huge gaps in the fossil record like most species, it supports the findings of a new species rather than an evolutionary progression predicted by naturalists. Despite this overwhelming acknowledgment among paleontologists, textbooks across America still hale Archaeopteryx as sound evidence for Darwinism.
Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian Era happened approximately 520-530 million years ago. During this period, within a small window of time we see a very dramatic event known to paleontologists as the Cambrian Explosion. During this “big bang of biology” we see the sudden emergence of virtually every body type or phyla known to have existed, without a trace of evolutionary forerunners. Prior to this event, the earth was inhabited by single-celled life for billions of years and therefore this stands as the clearest evidence of the abrupt appearance we would expect from a creation model. For the evolutionists, it’s their greatest enigma because of the absence of previous complex organisms to cloud the evidence. If there was anything before it—a cat, a mule or a bee—you could bet it was evolution. But there was nothing, therefore Darwin’s tree of life no longer has a trunk.
Mass Extinctions
From there we move on to four other eras in earth’s history, primarily the Permian, the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous, where the strata reveal mass extinctions followed by an emergence of predominantly new, vastly diverse groups of life. In the case of the Permian extinction, the devastation was so enormous it is believed that 95 percent of earth’s inhabitants were destroyed, leaving only small marine life.
Yet in a small window of evolutionary time, we see the earth quickly inhabited by a new group of more complex and diverse organisms. As geologists and paleontologists probe the extinction/recovery events that have happened, what they are finding is that species exist relatively unchanged, yet have a predisposition toward extinction, not speciation. New species seem to emerge during a small window of time and appear with fully functioning body parts which are designed for their particular environment.
Punctuated Equilibrium
In order to overcome this grave problem, evolutionists produced a new theory called Punctuated Equilibrium: evolution making sudden leaps forward. “We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity…” But even Gould acknowledged: “The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils” --Steven J. Gould, Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist.
Today, Punctuated Equilibrium is widely accepted by evolutionists. Problem: it’s evolution without the evolution. As Henry Gee, chief scientific writer for Nature writes, “The intervals of time that separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything about the possible connection through ancestry and descent.”
Human Evolution
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (Genesis 1:27, 2:7).
For decades we were told by the scientific community that Neanderthal was the missing link between man and his previous ancestors. While Neanderthal may have looked quite human he has features very different from man along with a much smaller brain. With the advances in DNA testing, a Neanderthal bone was finally tested and the results were devastating for evolutionist. Turns out Neanderthal is not linked to humans at all, but is an entirely different species. So how did evolutionists solve this problem? They moved our closest ancestor to Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis (there is still debate on whether Heidelbergensis is distinct species). But this brings about more problems than it solves.
If Neanderthal, who looks a lot like a human, is not linked to mankind based on DNA tests, why should we believe Homo erectus, which looks more like an ape, is linked to man? Remember, evolution is gradualism. We are told that we evolved from Homo erectus around 100,000 years ago. How could we go from a primitive ape who did not have the capacity to speak, to mankind who builds cathedrals, space shuttles and does mathematics and philosophy?
The Image of God
What does it mean to be made in the image of God? What does it mean to have a spirit? Put another way, what distinguishes mankind from other creatures?
Darwinian Evolution does not have a credible explanation for any of these features only found in mankind. Alfred Wallace co-founded the Theory of Evolution along side Charles Darwin. He later retracted his position to one known today as The Wallace Problem. He noticed that if you take a child head hunter from the Amazon Jungle, move him to Oxford and give him a formal education, he would be able to do mathematics, philosophy, and write poetry. He would be able to appreciate art, music and literature. Because of this self-evident fact, Wallace concluded that mankind holds “un-opened gifts”. These gifts while apparent, do not in any way enhance our survival in the wild. Why or how they exist cannot be explained by natural selection. Alfred Wallace – co-founder of evolution with Charles Darwin.
Articles
The Five Crises of Evolutionary Theory Dr. Ray Bohlin
Darwin's Defenders deny Life's Evident Design Stephen C. Meyers
The Top Ten Scientific Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution Casey Luskin
A Review of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism Norman Geisler
Status Update: The Latest on Neanderthals Fuz Rana
Differences Between Chimp and Human DNA Recalculated Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson
Much of what they do is cherry picking as well. For example, I was watching a show on Discovery recently about the Venus Fly Trap. This is the plant with a flower that closes on insects and eats them. The host was explaining that millions of years ago these trees were going extinct because bugs were destroying them so they had to develop a way to survive. Evolution lead us to the fly trap, which protected the tree from insects. Sounds good. The problem, of course, is how do you explain fruit trees which obviously attract bugs to their fruit?
Since evolution is so ingrained in Western culture and because it has become so antithetical to creation, we dedicate an entire session to it in our course Introduction to Apologetics. Below you will find exerpts from that session and some of the problems we discuss. Our goal is that the Christian can speak intelligently about the subject, so when your child comes home from school with questions, you can properly answer them. During the session, we do not introduce new interpretations of the science, rather we use existing popular science and expose its many flaws. By way of disclaimer, the information below may or may not be our interpretation of the science, which is irrelevant. We are simply using their interpretations because I have found that this is a better method of debating them, than what many creationists do by introducing their version of the science. Then all you do is get into an endless debate about who's science is better.
One more note that we discuss in class: we truly believe that the evolution/creation debate is futile with atheists because it usually becomes a long dragged out process of trying to refute some of the world's most popular scientists. This information is best used on the Christian who is being seduced by evolution. For the atheist who believes that evolution disproves God, we recommend that you focus on divorcing evolution from God, demonstrating that these are two very difference endeavors. Once you accomplish this, you can speak entirely on the evidence for the existence of God.
The Origins of Life
The Theory of Evolution begins with the emergence of single celled life which we know inhabited the earth in large numbers for a very long time. To date, evolutionists have failed to provide a credible theory on how single celled life could have emerged by natural causes, not because they haven't tried for decades but because singled celled life is as complex as a modern city, except that it fits in the head of a needle, making it vastly more precise. Both contain:
- Energy plant
- Highways
- Defense department
- Hospital
- Data processing center
- Manufacturing plant
- Sewage plant
- Library
- Etc.
“The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.” Michael Denton, Agnostic and Microbiologist
Evolution and Time
Evolutionists claim that we cannot witness evolution because there is not enough time, as it takes millions of years and thousands of generations. Yet, the most extensive and longest running investigation has been undertaken by Richard Lenski of Michigan State University, who has been continuously growing cultures of E. coli in his laboratory since the late 1980s and monitoring the facets of their evolution. Because they have a short life span, the number of generations he has produced has approached 50,000. Lenski’s investigation is large enough and long enough to give solid, reliable answers to many questions about evolution. Nonetheless, all of the mutations identified to date can readily be classified as either modification-of-function or loss-of-function. Behe, M.J. 2010. Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations, and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution.’ Quarterly Review of Biology 85.
While the study has demonstrated that bacteria does mutate and develops resistance to drugs, it has yet to produce anything but more bacteria. This of course is not evolution, which would require new advanced species. More importantly, the study demonstrates that in fact, mutations that produce advantages, essential to the evolutionary model, are rare occurrences.
Random Mutations
In the most open-ended laboratory evolution experiment (Lenski 2004), in which no specific selection pressure was intentionally brought to bear, all of the adaptive mutations that have been so far identified have either been loss-of-function or modification-of-function mutations, and there is strong reason to believe that most of the modification-of-function mutations diminished protein activity. Behe, M.J. 2010. Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations, and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution.’ Quarterly Review of Biology 85, 419-445
With almost all mutations recorded being detrimental to the species rather than beneficial, it is more likely that species would have gone extinct rather than evolving into more complex creatures. More specifically, if 51% of random mutations are detrimental to the species the likelihood is that the species dies out. Beneficial mutations must exceed the 51% threshold for the Theory of Evolution to be credible because so much of the theory rest on random mutations. And yet you could not find a study today where the number of beneficial random mutations in any species exceeds 10%.
Imagine a manual for assembling a child’s wagon. Would randomly changing letters in the manual improve the manual? Would duplicating sections of the manual improve it? Clearly these types of changes would destroy information rather than create new, better information. Biological evolution assumes that such random changes not only could change the wagon, but these random “mutations” would evolve the wagon into a car and eventually a plane, and then even a space shuttle. Cornell University geneticist Dr. John Sanford, Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome
Human DNA and Monkeys
What about the evolutionist’s claim that our DNA is 95 to 98 percent similar to monkeys? Can changes in the DNA sequence bring about new species? No, because the differences at the chemical base level are still in the millions. The DNA in a zebra fish is 92 percent similar to monkeys yet you never see them swimming together.
“Every living species has its own unique, matching number of chromosomes. An animal with 13 cannot mate with a species with 12 or 14 chromosomes. Whenever that rare mismatch does happen, such as a horse mating with a donkey to produce a mule, the offspring are usually sterile or monster-like….If we are descendants of amphibians, which have 13 pairs of chromosomes, not only did the original 13 chromosomes change, but 10 chromosomes, with approximately 130 million chemical bases on each, were added. That would be like replacing half the books in the Library of Congress and then adding ten new wings full of books, one text at a time, in correct numerical order…all without a plan. All perhaps done with a blind librarian.” Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, What Darwin Didn’t Know
Evolving Microbes?
In November 2004 National Geographic published an article by David Quammen titled “Was Darwin Wrong?” Early on, he assures us that in fact Darwin was not wrong because the evidence is overwhelming. He cites the best research, including the Peter Gant study which we’ve already discussed, along with the discredited pepper moth studies. Here’s his best evidence: “The capacity for quick change among disease-causing microbes is what makes them so dangerous to large numbers of people…By natural selection they acquire resistance to drugs that should kill them. They evolve. There’s no better or more immediate evidence supporting Darwinian theory than this process of forced transformation among our inimical germs…These antibiotic-resistant strains represent an evolutionary series, not much different from the fossil series tracing horse evolution from Hyracotherium to Equis.”
The problem of course is that they are still microbes, rather than new organisms, which is the claim of evolutionists. Remember that no one is denying micro evolution, which is change within the species. To claim that micro-evolution leads to new divergent species is like saying I can flap my arms, therefore I can fly like an eagle. It is an astronomical leap between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, and evolutionists are a long way from making their case.
Information Theory
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the heat in the universe always moves from order to disorder. Information Theory, its close cousin, demonstrates that over time, information will always diminish rather than advance. For example, the further we go back in time, the harder it is to piece together archeological findings because information is diminishing. If you close your garage door and come back ten years later, the information you had when you left would be affected. Colors fade, weather erodes, bugs damage, etc. It has been empirically proven that information moves from order to disorder.
Yet for evolutionary biology to hold true, the opposite would have to happen. Massive advances in molecular information would have to surge forward, but that’s never been empirically tested and affirmed. It seems logical to conclude that a strictly materialistic world could never produce a well-written book, much less a huge library of books which is required in the DNA sequences of every living organism including bacteria.
Dr. James M. Tour
Dr. James M. Tour is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University. He has authored or co-authored 489 scientific publications and his name is on 36 patents.
…I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me? … Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me. http://www.jmtour.com
Problems with Natural Selection
Is it plausible for a faster, more muscular gazelle to survive over its slower peers? Of course. Is it possible that he can pass on that advantage to the next generation? Of course. And is it also possible that all the slower gazelles will become dinner for the nearby lion pride? Of course. Anything under the sun is possible. A question remains: “Is it probable?”
Under the Darwinian paradigm, the mutation does not only make the species better, it makes it different. The advantage has to account for a transition from, say, an arm to a wing. The problem of course is that such a transition would produce so many wing-arms that the new feature would be a huge disadvantage through the transitional stages. The likelihood is that the mutated species would die. A wing-arm doesn’t fly, and it can no longer grip branches. The example used in many text books is the four winged fruit fly, which of course, can't fly.
Natural selection can only select for advantages. Disadvantages die off because they cannot survive. Therefore, to move from one species to another requires successive advantageous mutations with very few disadvantageous mutations. Once an advantage shows up, then we have another huge hurtle, and that would be passing it on to your offspring. Remembering that a mutation is a DNA copying error. That is, as the DNA molecule continues throughout every species life to make new cells, they are carbon copies of our existing genome. A mutation is just an error in that coping process. The odds of passing on a copying error is low, the probability of it not dissipating over multiple breeding cycles if it is passed on is remote. And yet the entire theory rests on this proposition.
Survival of the Fittest
The idea of “survival of the fittest” as a theory is weak at best, because the phrase uses circular reasoning to make its point. It even lacks the ability to make predictions. In other words, we know it’s the fittest because it survived. Today the earth is inhabited by super species which made the evolutionary cut. But is a cow, an armadillo, or a frog really the fittest?
Evolutionists will take hours explaining how the markings on the leopard gave it an advantage and thus it was able to survive. The problem, of course, is how do they explain a zebra which can be spotted from miles away? The evolutionists cherry pick examples to make their case.
Other advantages
Why do we see so many advantages in the different species that don’t necessarily advance survival? For example, although I find my fingernails and toenails advantageous, I hardly think their absence would lead to my extinction. My eyebrows protect my eyes from glare, but once again, I hardly think I need them for survival. The evolutionists would argue that it is simply a random mutation, but I’m thinking a random event would put a fingernail on my forehead, not perfectly on every finger. We can fill volumes of books with such example, leaving us with more questions than answers.
Disadvantages
And then what about those features which are disadvantageous; why are they still around? Why do people still have bad eyesight? Shouldn’t they have died of starvation or war? Why do some humans have light skin? Shouldn’t they have died off from cancer? And why did hominids stand upright, slowing them down in the process? The point is this: a legitimate model would account for such obvious shortcomings.
Common Objection to Creation
One of the biggest objections to the creation model is the argument from perfection. If creationists are right, why do we have an appendix and cancer? Many atheists complain about the design of our digestive system and so forth. We are not perfect and therefore cannot possibly be the product of an all-knowing creator.
But design does not imply perfection. My car is the obvious product of design. It has many features that are complex and have a purpose. But occasionally my car breaks due to something that could have been designed better. Does that mean my car was not the product of a purposeful architect, engineer, and designer, but rather the product of an explosion in a steel mill? Of course not, design does not imply perfection. An artist can paint a beautiful portrait, but the fact that it's not perfect is no reason to think the painting is the product of a paint spill.
Problems with the Fossil Record
Charles Darwin: “The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on earth, must be truly enormous. 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 gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” Charles Darwin, Origins of Species
While the fossil record does indicate that species became larger and more complex over time, this is not evolution. Evolution is gradualism. A fossil record that supports evolution would show a very gradual progression from one species to another with the corresponding intermediary. An intermediary or transitional form is a species that lived between two other species which link the two and served as a transition between the two. Two factors must be present to qualify as an intermediary:
- One, it must have lived during the appropriate time, that is, between the two differing categories of species.
- Two, we must see some degree of body parts (i.e., wings, fins, hands, brain) in a state of development rather than fully functioning limbs and body parts, which in most cases would indicate a separate unique species.
The number of transitional forms discovered will vary depending on who you ask and with the measure that one uses. The range is anywhere between 100 and 5,000 intermediaries. Is this sufficient to support evolutionary theory? Well over the course of earth's history, the planet has seen over 3.5 million species. How many intermediaries would this require? At minimum, 3.5 million, and likely more because many species need hundreds if not thousands of mutations to emerge as a link between previous ancestors. Molecular biologist Michael Denton, M.D., Ph.D. notes, “The infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin.”
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” More specifically he notes, “The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1) Status. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; Morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2) Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed. Steven J. Gould, Harvard paleontologist and the leading evolutionist
David Berlinski, Mathematician, philosopher, biochemist
What do you have to do to change a cow into a whale and still retain a similar breathing apparatus. Essentially everything about the cow has to change. We have a sense of the numbers. Anytime the sciences avoid numbers, it is immersing itself in an unavoidable miasma. Skin has to change, breathing apparatus have to change, a diving apparatus has to be put in place, the eyes have to be protected, hearing has to be altered, salivary organs have to change, feeding mechanisms have to change. The calculations are not hard, I stopped at 50,000 changes. All these changes are coordinated. What does this suggest we should see in the fossil record? An enormous plethora of animals; intermediaries. That won’t solve all problems, but at least it will put it in the ballpark of a quantitative estimate.
Archaeopteryx – Missing Link?
In our public textbooks, Archaeopteryx is still publicized as the missing link between birds and reptiles and is often called the first bird, having lived between 125 million and 165 million years ago. About the size of a modern bird, it was covered in feathers and had small wings and a long tail, along with other birdlike features such as a wishbone and a reverse big toe. First impressions would indicate that such a creature would add credibility to the idea of a missing link, as the feathers alone had only been found on one dinosaur around that period.
Problem: nothing leading up to Archaeopteryx remotely resembles such an organism with feathers and wings, and we don’t see birdlike species for tens of millions of years after Archaeopteryx went extinct. Because it stands alone with huge gaps in the fossil record like most species, it supports the findings of a new species rather than an evolutionary progression predicted by naturalists. Despite this overwhelming acknowledgment among paleontologists, textbooks across America still hale Archaeopteryx as sound evidence for Darwinism.
Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian Era happened approximately 520-530 million years ago. During this period, within a small window of time we see a very dramatic event known to paleontologists as the Cambrian Explosion. During this “big bang of biology” we see the sudden emergence of virtually every body type or phyla known to have existed, without a trace of evolutionary forerunners. Prior to this event, the earth was inhabited by single-celled life for billions of years and therefore this stands as the clearest evidence of the abrupt appearance we would expect from a creation model. For the evolutionists, it’s their greatest enigma because of the absence of previous complex organisms to cloud the evidence. If there was anything before it—a cat, a mule or a bee—you could bet it was evolution. But there was nothing, therefore Darwin’s tree of life no longer has a trunk.
Mass Extinctions
From there we move on to four other eras in earth’s history, primarily the Permian, the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous, where the strata reveal mass extinctions followed by an emergence of predominantly new, vastly diverse groups of life. In the case of the Permian extinction, the devastation was so enormous it is believed that 95 percent of earth’s inhabitants were destroyed, leaving only small marine life.
Yet in a small window of evolutionary time, we see the earth quickly inhabited by a new group of more complex and diverse organisms. As geologists and paleontologists probe the extinction/recovery events that have happened, what they are finding is that species exist relatively unchanged, yet have a predisposition toward extinction, not speciation. New species seem to emerge during a small window of time and appear with fully functioning body parts which are designed for their particular environment.
Punctuated Equilibrium
In order to overcome this grave problem, evolutionists produced a new theory called Punctuated Equilibrium: evolution making sudden leaps forward. “We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity…” But even Gould acknowledged: “The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils” --Steven J. Gould, Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist.
Today, Punctuated Equilibrium is widely accepted by evolutionists. Problem: it’s evolution without the evolution. As Henry Gee, chief scientific writer for Nature writes, “The intervals of time that separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything about the possible connection through ancestry and descent.”
Human Evolution
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (Genesis 1:27, 2:7).
For decades we were told by the scientific community that Neanderthal was the missing link between man and his previous ancestors. While Neanderthal may have looked quite human he has features very different from man along with a much smaller brain. With the advances in DNA testing, a Neanderthal bone was finally tested and the results were devastating for evolutionist. Turns out Neanderthal is not linked to humans at all, but is an entirely different species. So how did evolutionists solve this problem? They moved our closest ancestor to Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis (there is still debate on whether Heidelbergensis is distinct species). But this brings about more problems than it solves.
- Time gap – There is a 10,000 - 100,000 year gap between man's appearance and Homo erectus' extinction.
- Morphological differences – Homo erectus is a small monkey that walked upright.
- Intellectual differences – Homo erectus may have made some primitive tools.
- Spiritual differences – No worship or decoration.
- Cannot do DNA test beyond 100,000 years unless the DNA is well preserved in ice.
If Neanderthal, who looks a lot like a human, is not linked to mankind based on DNA tests, why should we believe Homo erectus, which looks more like an ape, is linked to man? Remember, evolution is gradualism. We are told that we evolved from Homo erectus around 100,000 years ago. How could we go from a primitive ape who did not have the capacity to speak, to mankind who builds cathedrals, space shuttles and does mathematics and philosophy?
The Image of God
What does it mean to be made in the image of God? What does it mean to have a spirit? Put another way, what distinguishes mankind from other creatures?
- Immortal – Thinks beyond the grave.
- Spiritual – Prays, repents and communicates with God.
- Consciousness – Reflective and aware of her surroundings, past, present and future.
- Logical – Thinks rationally.
- Moral – Knows right from wrong; Longs for justice.
- Beauty – Man can perceive and appreciate beauty.
- Creative – Mankind is original, imaginative, artistic, resourceful.
- Love, bravery and altruism – Mankind has the ability to be selfless, which is in sharp contrast to a theory based on survival.
Darwinian Evolution does not have a credible explanation for any of these features only found in mankind. Alfred Wallace co-founded the Theory of Evolution along side Charles Darwin. He later retracted his position to one known today as The Wallace Problem. He noticed that if you take a child head hunter from the Amazon Jungle, move him to Oxford and give him a formal education, he would be able to do mathematics, philosophy, and write poetry. He would be able to appreciate art, music and literature. Because of this self-evident fact, Wallace concluded that mankind holds “un-opened gifts”. These gifts while apparent, do not in any way enhance our survival in the wild. Why or how they exist cannot be explained by natural selection. Alfred Wallace – co-founder of evolution with Charles Darwin.
Articles
The Five Crises of Evolutionary Theory Dr. Ray Bohlin
Darwin's Defenders deny Life's Evident Design Stephen C. Meyers
The Top Ten Scientific Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution Casey Luskin
A Review of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism Norman Geisler
Status Update: The Latest on Neanderthals Fuz Rana
Differences Between Chimp and Human DNA Recalculated Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson