Frequently Encountered Criticisms in Evolution vs. Creationism: Revised and Expanded

Compiled by Mark I. Vuletic [send feedback]

Last updated August 26, 1999.

New Scientist's "Planet Science" Site of the Day, 7 April 1996

This list is intended to serve as an elementary introduction to some of the claims various creationists make against what they call "evolution." Note that, as far as some creationists are concerned, "evolution" includes much more than just evolutionary biology - creationist criticisms can extend to much of geology, paleontology, physics, cosmology, astronomy, and numerous other areas of scientific inquiry. This list is not nearly as complete or rigorous as it could be, but I hope it will help as a useful initiation for beginners, and perhaps a reference for more experienced participants. For more rigorous refutations of creationist arguments and assertions, consult the talk.origins archive and the references at the end of this list.

Index

Click on the number next to the creationist argument/assertion to jump to the corresponding evolutionist reply.

Section 1: Cosmology, Astronomy, Planetary Geology

1.1: The sun contains most of the mass, but only 2% of the angular momentum of the solar system. If the solar system had condensed from a gas cloud, most of its angular momentum would be in the sun.
1.2: Most sets of fundamental constants would lead to a universe in which life could not exist. Therefore, the fundamental constants of the universe must have been fine-tuned by a creator who wished to bring man into existence.
1.3: At the present rate of influx of meteoritic dust from space, the earth and moon after 5 billion years should each be covered with a meteoritic dust layer more than 180 feet thick.
1.4: The 1st law of thermodynamics states that the energy in the universe is constant. The Big Bang theory states that the universe came out of nothing, so it violates this thermodynamic law.
1.5: The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that disorder in the universe always increases. This means that the universe could not have started in an ordered state unless it was "wound up" by a Creator.
1.6: The rotation of the Earth has been slowing at a rate of 30 seconds per century. If the Earth were billions of years old, the rotation rate at the outset would have been so great that the planet could not have held together, much less support life.
1.7: Quantum mechanics proves the existence of a creator, since there must have been some entity external to the universe to observe it and thus collapse it into a determinate state.
1.8: Big Bang theory says the universe came from nothing. But something cannot come from nothing, so God must have created the universe.

Section 2: Terrestrial Geology, Radioisotope Dating

2.1: Many test using 14C give dates that are obviously wrong or conflict with dates given by other radioisotope tests. For instance, a living mollusk was once shown by 14C dating to be dead for 3,000 years.
2.2: The ages of rocks are determined by the kinds of fossils they contain, but the dating of the fossils depends upon evolutionary assumptions. The use of the old age of rocks to support evolution is thus a circular argument.
2.3: The rate of decay in the geomagnetic field sets an outside limit of 10,000 years for the age of the earth.
2.4: If the earth were as old as geologists say, uranium decay would have put into the atmosphere more helium than we currently find there.
2.5: There are places where "older" rock strata lie above "younger" rock strata.
2.6: Radiometric dating is extremely inaccurate, as is shown by the fact that such experiments frequently have error factors of a few million years.
2.7: Many radiometric dating tests have yielded false results. Evolutionists discard all those that are inconsistent with their prior assumptions and keep those that "verify" their theory.
2.8: Radiometric dating reports the earth to be old only because the cataclysmic action of Noah's Flood changed the radioisotope concentrations in the young earth.
2.9: Noah's flood was caused by the condensing of a vapor canopy that contained the waters of the flood. Prior to the flood, the vapor canopy also extended people's lifespans to the huge ages listed in Genesis, because it blocked out harmful UV rays.
2.10: Niagara Falls is moving upstream at a known rate each year. Its current location allows only about 5,000 years since the time it started eroding.

Section 3: Origin of Life

3.1: The law of biogenesis states that life comes only from previous life. Therefore prebiotic synthesis - which states that life first developed from nonliving molecules - contradicts a major law of science.
3.2: Amino acids in living organisms are all left-handed, but in nature, equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed amino acids form, so one would expect them to occur in equal proportions in living organisms if abiogenesis were true.
3.3: Nucleic acids cannot replicate without the help of proteins. Proteins, however, cannot form unless specified by nucleic a cid sequences. Thus, genetic systems could not have started naturally.
3.4: There are n! ways of an enzyme or DNA strand of n parts forming prebiotically. Since the smallest proteins have at least 100 amino acids, the chance of forming a particular enzyme prebiotically is at most 1/100!, which is small enough to be disregarded.
3.5: Even though the Earth is an open system, the second law of thermodynamics still poses an insuperable barrier to abiogenesis, since order in an open system will increase only when there is a complex system (such as a host of enzymes or a supernatural creator) to influence the reactions. An increase in order in the absence of such a complex system would be like sunshine causing loose parts in a junkyard to assemble itself into a pickup truck.

Section 4: Biological Evolution, Mutations, Speciation

4.1: Chromosome numbers cannot change without producing very harmful effects.
4.2: The perfection of the structures of the various life forms on earth clearly reveal themselves as the work of an intelligent designer. Nowhere is this more evident than in the unbelievably complex human eye.
4.3: Evolutionists cannot tell us exactly how most organisms arose. For instance, no one can explain what series of mutations could have given caterpillars the ability to metamorphose into butterflies.
4.4: The genetic variation in populations that allows them to adapt to environmental change through microevolution (as revealed in industrial melanism and bacterial antibiotic resistance) was deliberately put in place by the creator.
4.5: Homologous features do not prove any ancestral relationship between organisms, because all classifications above the species level are man-made and arbitrary.
4.6: Industrial melanism does not demonstrate evolution at all because no speciation occurs.
4.7: Mutations are universally deleterious, and thus cannot be a driving factor in evolution.
4.8: There are plenty of records of mutations causing birth defects, but none of mutations causing "birth improvements."
4.9: The rate of mutation is so small that it could never serve as a source of variation.
4.10: Macroevolution remains unproved because no one has observed it. In fact, macroevolution is in principle unobservable, so evolution must be unscientific.
4.11: No one has ever seen one species arise from another.
4.12: If evolution were true, then fish would have evolved into amphibians and land animals more than once.
4.13: Sexual reproduction could not have come about through evolution.
4.14: There is no evidence for the rapid development of new species.
4.15: Natural selection is tautological: the fittest survive, and those who survive are the fittest.
4.16: Organisms feature numerous "irreducibly complex" structures and processes, which could not have developed via small evolutionary steps. Evolutionists have not even tried to explain how such structures and processes could evolve.
4.17 Given uniform population growth rates, we can extrapolate backwards from today's population to prove that there could not have been humans before 10,000 years ago.
4.18 Haldane's Dilemma proves that humans could not have evolved over the time span evolutionists say they did.

Section 5: Paleontology, Fossils, Transitional Forms

5.1: The feather impressions in fossils of Archaeopteryx are forgeries.
5.2: Archaeopteryx is not a transitional form but a full-fledged bird. Any reptilian characteristics it displays are mirrored in modern birds such as the hoatzin.
5.3: Protoavis precedes Archaeopteryx in the fossil record, so Archaeopteryx cannot possibly be a transitional form.
5.4: The Cambrian explosion is a sure sign of the activity of the Creator, suddenly creating a multitude of complex forms out of nothing. There are no fossils before the explosion.
5.5: All of the explanations of gaps in the fossil record, such as the invocation of punctuated equilibrium and the low probability of fossilization, render the evolutionary prediction of transitional forms unfalsifiable.
5.6: Fossils are the remains of the living organisms that perished in Noah's Flood.
5.7: In their search for transitional forms, the evolutionary community has been taken in by outright fraud, as in the case of Piltdown Man, which was accepted as a valid specimen for 40 years, and by unfounded speculation, as in the construction of Nebraska Man from what later turned out to be a pig tooth. This shows how unobjective evolutionists are.
5.8: There are no adequate transitional forms between fish and amphibians.
5.9: There are no adequate transitional forms between reptiles and mammals.
5.10: There are no adequate transitional forms between early hominids and Homo sapiens.

Section 6: Philosophy of Science, Educational Issues

6.1: It is likely that many structures in the universe were created with the mere appearance of old age.
6.2: Evolution teaches that there are no such things as souls, that the Bible is fraudulent, and that God does not exist.
6.3: Great scientists such as Newton and Kepler believed in a literal Genesis.
6.4: Evolutionists are trying to take over the school system and force their beliefs upon the students.
6.5: Natural processes cannot be the cause of qualities seen in humans like love. For instance, the cause of love must be something loving.
6.6: There are many theories of evolution, each of which "conclusively disproves" the other.
6.7: Evolution is unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific.
6.8: Electrons are materially inconceivable, but physicists largely accept them as real entities. So what is to keep one from accepting the reality of an inconceivable Creator?
6.9: The exclusive teaching of evolution in the science classroom violates the teaching of multiculturalism, because many different cultures have creation myths which contradict evolution.
6.10: Evolution predicts that natural law should be constantly evolving, as opposed to the creation model, which states that law should stay fixed.
6.11: Nothing can be proven, particularly events in the past. Therefore, creationism must be just as reasonable as evolution.
6.12: There is nothing wrong with invoking supernatural explanations.
6.13: There are many unanswered questions in science, such as the details of the origin of the universe and of prebiotic synthesis. Thus we require a supernatural God for explanation.
6.14: Evolution is just a theory.
6.15: Evolution and creationism are the only two possible models of origins. There are many serious problems with evolution, so creationism is the correct model by default.
6.16: Evolution is the basis for Naziism, laissez-faire capitalism, slavery, etc.

Main Text

The creationist claims are in bold print, and are immediately followed by evolutionist responses.

Cosmology, Astronomy, Planetary Geology

1.1: The sun contains most of the mass, but only 2% of the angular momentum of the solar system. If the solar system had condensed from a gas cloud, most of its angular momentum would be in the sun. The sun transferred most of its momentum to the planets via a process known as "magnetic braking." In the early stages of the solar system, the magnetic field of the sun dragged ionized atoms in the solar nebula with it, thereby transferring energy that accelerated the atoms but slowed the sun's rotation. (Wagner, 1991, 436)

1.2: Most sets of fundamental constants would lead to a universe in which life could not exist. Therefore, the fundamental constants of our universe must have been fine-tuned by a creator who wished to bring man into existence. A large number of (presently) unfounded assumptions go into this new version of the argument from design: (1) That any creator that made a universe like ours must have done so for the sake of producing human life, (2) that our universe was not generated by a natural process that is capable of generating multiple universes, (3) that the actual range in which fundamental constants can vary is extremely high, and (4) that the number of universes in which any type of life can exist is an extremely small fraction of the number of possible universes.

  1. Let us assume hypothetically that the fundamental constants of our universe were in fact deliberately set by an intelligent entity. This, by itself, does not guarantee that the entity in question wished to create man specifically - physicist and astronomer Victor J. Stenger (1997), for instance, wonders why no one believes the creator's goal was to make cockroaches. In fact, since the universes in which life can exist are the only types of universes in which various stars and planets can form, an entity that fine-tuned the universe could have done so for the express purpose of creating certain inanimate objects, and life arose as a (perhaps unforseen) side-effect. An entity capable of setting the fundamental constants of the universe may even have generated multiple universes, setting the constants randomly, until an interesting effect arose in one or more of them. So the specific theological thesis the creationists aim for extends beyond the data, even if most of their assumptions about fine-tuning are granted.
  2. If our universe came into existence via a natural process that is capable of producing multiple universes with varying sets of fundamental constants (the naturalistic analogue of the supernatural tinkerer at the end of point 1), then it may in fact be inevitable that a universe such as ours would eventually come into existence (how probable it would be depends in part upon the number of universes the process can generate). The more universes the process generates, the higher the probability that one of the ones generated will be like ours.

    Examples of possible sources of multiple universes with varying constants include (1) black holes in other universes, and singularities created by the collapse of other universes (Smolin, 1997; Gribbin, 1993, 243-254 - such mechanisms, of course, assume that there is at least one universe "outside" of ours), (2) a primordial space-time "foam" (Dickson, 1997), or (3) absolutely nothing (on the flip side of the question "How can anything come from nothing?" is the question "If there is nothing at all, how can there be a restriction on something coming into being?").

  3. In the absence of a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, we can't determine how flexible the fundamental constants are. There may be an underlying fact about nature that forces the constants to assume the values we have found. A speculative theory of quantum gravity due to Stephen Hawking, for instance, does precisely that - if Hawking's theory is true, then the universe must have the constants it does, and there could never have been a time when the constants could have been "chosen" by a creator. In Hawking's oft-quoted words:

    There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time...The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE. (Hawking, 1988,136).

  4. In order to be sure that the "fine-tuning" of the universe is in fact "fine," we must be able to determine that an extremely large number of alternate universes, inhospitable to life, are equiprobable with ours. Such a hypothesis outruns the present state of cosmology.

    The creationists must be able to demonstrate (within reason) that the constants must indeed be fine-tuned in order for any kind of intelligent life to exist. Victor Stenger (1997) has argued that many more possible universes admit the potential of intelligent life than is generally thought. And we must factor in the possibility of lifeforms that are very different from carbon-based ones, when we seek such a demonstration.

Carl Sagan brings together most of these points:

[D]educing that the laws of Nature and the values of the physical constants were established (don't ask how or by Whom) so that humans would eventually come to be...sounds like playing my first hand of bridge, winning, knowing that there are 54 billion billion billion [5.4 x 1028] possible other hands that I was equally likely to have been dealt...and then foolishly concluding that a god of bridge exists and favors me, a god who arranged the cards and the shuffle with my victory foreordained from The Beginning. We do not know how many other hands there are in the cosmic deck, how many other kinds of universes, laws of Nature, and physical constants that could also lead to life and intelligence and perhaps even delusions of self-importance...Clearly we have not a glimmering of how to determine which laws of Nature are "possible" and which are not. Nor do we have more than the most rudimentary notion of what correlations of natural laws are "permitted." (Sagan, 1994, 34-35)

So the universe may not be fine-tuned at all, it may not require fine-tuning to generate intelligent life, or it may be fine-tuned as a matter of statistical necessity. These possibilities need to be ruled out (sufficiently) for fundamental constants to provide evidence for divine creation - and even then, the theology of creation is still up in the air.

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1.3: "...at the present rate of influx of meteoritic dust from space, the earth and moon after 5 billion years should each be covered with a meteoritic dust layer more than 180 feet thick. This calculation is based on a long outdated, speculative estimate by Hans Pettersson (1960). The ICR seems unaware of data since derived from space technology that reveals a much lower rate of dust influx - a rate that causes the creationist argument to collapse." (Ecker, 1990, 183)

More resources:


1.4: The lst law of thermodynamics states that the energy in the universe is constant. The Big Bang theory states that the universe came out of nothing, so it violates this thermodynamic law. Even in the earliest days of the Big Bang theory, cosmologists recognized that one could not be sure whether conservation of energy applied prior to the Planck time (the first 1x10-43 seconds of the universe) for two reasons: (1) the conditions prior to the Planck time were so extreme that Big Bang theory itself, and indeed, all of classical physics, breaks down in that time period; (2) because of the small size of the universe prior to Planck time, quantum mechanical effects would become relevant, so in the absence of a fully developed theory of quantum gravity (a fusion of quantum mechanics and relativity) one could not know what happened in that time period. Therefore, for the conventional Big Bang theorists, all bets were off before Planck time.

The suggestion that the lst law of thermodynamics may not apply to the pre-Planck-time universe is not quite as outlandish as it may seem at first, since science has progressively uncovered hitherto unexpected and counterintuitive aspects of the universe under conditions that deviate from those we are accustomed to in our everday lives (for instance, the breakdown of classical dynamics at very high speeds and very small lengths). The origin of the universe, combining extremely high energy with very small length could legitimately be expected to give rise to new effects, pointing to a gap at what seems to be an exceptionless law at "normal" temperatures and sizes. Indeed, the existence of quantum vacuum fluctuations, verified through the detecion of the Casimir-Polder force (Crabb, 1994, 102) and the measurement of the Lamb shift in hydrogen (Barrow, 1983, 65-66), have demonstrated a loophole by which matter (and perhaps even universes embedded within a larger spacetime) can exist in violation of classical conservation of energy for some time (the energy level ultimately balances, but need not do so immediately).

But let's leave aside this pre-quantum gravity speculation and look at the possible scenarios described by Lee Smolin for the outcome of any developed theory of quantum gravity:

[A] There is still a first moment in time, even when quantum mechanics is taken into consideration.
[B] The singularity is eliminated by some quantum mechanical effect. As a result, when we run the clock back, the universe does not reach a state of infinite density. Something else happens when the universe reaches some very high density that allows time to continue indefinitely into the past.
[C] Something new and strange and quantum mechanical happens to time, which is neither possibility A or B. For example, perhaps we reach a state where it is no longer appropriate to think that reality is composed of a series of moments that follow each other in a progression, one after another. In this case there is perhaps no singularity, but it may also not make sense to ask what happened before the universe was extremely dense.(Smolin, 1997, 82)

What implications do these alternatives have for the application of the 1st law of thermodynamics to the origin of the universe? In case A, the problem of the possible breakdown of physical law at the singularity arises once again, so it is unclear whether conservation of energy would apply in this case. If it does not, then conservation of energy obviously is no barrier to a naturalistic origin of the universe. However, if conservation of energy does hold in case A, this still does not pose a problem, since (by this hypothesis) the universe always contained the same amount of energy, and (because of the fact that case A has the universe starting from a singularity) there is no such thing as time "prior to the Big Bang," and therefore no time at which there was ever less energy than we find today.

Case B is obviously compatible with conservation of energy, since the universe always existed, and therefore may always have contained the same amount of energy it contains now.

In case C, for all I can tell, the notion of energy may not even make sense at early times, so if this case were instantiated, it would show that the 1st law of thermodynamics, just like Newton's laws, has its limits, and breaks down under conditions far more extreme than any we have ever experienced.

Finally, one might notice that if, as the creationists allege, creation ex nihilo (which modern cosmology does not postulate -- see 1.8) truly does violate the 1st law of thermodynamics, then creationism obviously violates the law, since it posits that the universe was brought into existence out of nothing by supernatural processes - "supernatural" meaning (in this case) "in violation of natural law." Creationists often hold a double-standard, claiming that evolution would be invalid if it violated natural law (which it does not), while at the same time claiming that creationism would not be invalid if it violated natural law (which it does). Nor would creationism better "explain" any violation of natural law than naturalism - even if we were hypothetically to concede that the universe did come into existence through a process that violates natural law, "God did it" is no more informative an explanation than "it just happened." The creationist claim is that the universe came into existence through unknown processes that are no longer in effect, yet were guided by an intelligent power. How is this superior even to the position that the universe came into existence through unknown processes that are no longer in effect, yet were not guided by an intelligent power (a position which, of course, naturalists do not have to take, since they rely on modern cosmology to render "known" the processes governing the universe)? Once one allows for processes that have nothing to do with the universe as we know it (in contrast to the way modern cosmology operates), then anything goes. To say that it is alright to have different laws "before" the origin of the universe if you are a supernaturalist, but not alright if you are a naturalist (as if the conditions at the beginning of the universe were not different than they are now), is definitely to hold a double-standard.

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1.5: The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that disorder in the universe always increases. This means that the universe could not have started in an ordered state unless it was "wound up" by a Creator.The laws of physics are void before the first 1 x 10-43 seconds of the universe, so there is no reason to suspect that the universe could not have "wound itself up" without the aid of a creator. Moreover, "[t]o talk about causation or creation implicitly assumes there was a time before the big bang singularity. We have known for twenty-five years that Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that time must have had a beginning in a singularity fifteen billion years ago" (Hawking, 1993, 46). There was no "before" in which a creator could have started the universe.

It makes no sense to retort that the creator exists outside of time, because, by definition, there can be no displacement or action unless there is time - thus, the creator could never start creating. Finally, if order can never arise spontaneously, where did this well-ordered creator come from? If the creator "always was" ordered, what is to keep the initial state of the universe from "always having been" ordered?

On a related note, some creationists take the 2nd law of thermodynamics as precluding the generation of "ordered" galaxies from a "disordered explosion" (i.e. the Big Bang). However, systems like galaxies formed as a means of dissipating gravitational energy, thereby increasing universal entropy. The formation of a tight arrangement of matter is not necessarily a shift from high entropy to low.

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1.6: The rotation of the Earth has been slowing at a rate of 30 seconds per century. If the Earth were billions of years old, the rotation rate at the outset would have been so great that the planet could not have held together, much less support life. Chris Stassen writes in response:

Whoever wrote this has the slowing rate very much wrong. The currently measured rate is about 0.00002 seconds per day per year. (That is, today the Earth completed its rotation about 0.00002 seconds slower than it did on this same day last year.)

If you multiply 2 x 10-5 seconds (per day) times 4 x 108 years (approximately the Devonian period), you get about 2.2 hours. The result would be about (365 * 24 / 21.8 ~= 400) days per year (since the length of the year hasn't changed). Devonian corals show about 400 daily growth layers per year (judged counting the daily layers in groups marked by larger fluctuations caused by seasonal change). In fact, this evidence is an excellent independent confirmation of the great antiquity of the Earth, and the accuracy of isotopic dating methods.

Note that these long extrapolations are necessarily somewhat rough, and get much less accurate with increasing time (particularly back to near the origin of the Earth). There are still arguments over the forces which dominate the slowing, and how much stronger or weaker they would have been when integrating backwards in time. (Stassen, 1997)

Mr. Stassen also recommends as resources Thwaites, Awbrey, 1982; Cazenave, 1982; Bursa, 1982; and Mignard, 1982.

1.7: Quantum mechanics proves the existence of a creator, since there must have been some entity external to the universe to observe it and thus collapse it into a determinate state. According to some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the wave function of a system will not collapse into a determinate state unless it is measured. However, when a measuring device is used to measure a system, the measuring device itself becomes entangled in the system's superposition. The only way out of this, say the creationists, is to posit a God who somehow stands outside of the universe and can measure it (thereby bringing it into a determinate state), without himself becoming entangled with the wave function of the universe. The problem with such an argument is that it takes for granted a specific interpretation of quantum mechanics when in fact it is a very contentious issue exactly what the correct interpretation is - some formulations of quantum mechanics do away with collapses altogether (e.g. pilot wave theories, "bare" theory, consistent histories), so there would be nothing for an "outside" observer to do. And even if we knew that there were collapses, some formulations of quantum mechanics dictate that interaction with a device of sufficient size is enough to cause a collapse (e.g. GRW) - there need be no "intelligent" observation. Finally, of the interpretations that do give special status to intelligent observers (such as Wigner's interpretation), the bulk presume that, at the very least humans have that status. Given this proliferation of interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is an outrageous move to seize upon an interpretation that posits some mysterious action of God as the reason why the universe appears to be in a determinate state, and declare it to be proof of the existence of God.

See Albert, 1992, for a survey of quantum mechanical theories.

 

1.8: Big Bang theory says the universe came from nothing. But something cannot come from nothing, so God must have created the universe. According to conventional Big Bang theory, space and time themselves originated with the Big Bang. If this is so, then there was no moment of time prior to the initial singularity predicted by the Big Bang (i.e. the very idea of "prior to the Big Bang" meaningless), and it would thus be inappropriate to talk about the universe "coming" from nothing. Instead, at the first instant of time, the universe already existed, so there is no problem about "where the universe came from" on the conventional view.

The Big Bang theory, however, does not provide a complete account of the origin of the universe, so one should not draw any metaphysical conclusions (whether theistic or atheistic) from it. Because the early universe combined small size with high energy, one cannot understand it in the absence of a theory of quantum gravity - a synthesis of quantum mechanics and relativity. No theory of quantum gravity has yet been fully developed, but according to Lee Smolin, a full theory of quantum gravity will have one of three consequences:

[A] There is still a first moment in time, even when quantum mechanics is taken into consideration.
[B] The singularity is eliminated by some quantum mechanical effect. As a result, when we run the clock back, the universe does not reach a state of infinite density. Something else happens when the universe reaches some very high density that allows time to continue indefinitely into the past.
[C] Something new and strange and quantum mechanical happens to time, which is neither possibility A or B. For example, perhaps we reach a state where it is no longer appropriate to think that reality is composed of a series of moments that follow each other in a progression, one after another. In this case there is perhaps no singularity, but it may also not make sense to ask what happened before the universe was extremely dense.(Smolin, 1997, 82)

If Smolin's category A turns out to be the case, then we have the same thing as that predicted by conventional Big Bang theory -- a universe which exists at every instant of time, and hence does not "come" from nothing.

If Smolin's category B turns out to be the case, then the universe always was, and hence the supposed problems raised by the universe coming from nothing do not arise.

If Smolin's category C turns out to be the case (this is the kind of scenario proposed, for instance, by Stephen Hawking, 1988), then once again, the universe does not "come" from nothing -- since the very notion of time-ordering ceases to have meaning in the early universe, it is senseless to talk about cause and effect relationships.

Creationism, then, finds no help from standard or quantum cosmology.

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Terrestrial Geology, Radioisotope Dating

2.1: Many tests using 14C give dates that are obviously wrong or conflict with dates given by other radioisotope tests. For instance, a living mollusk was once shown by 14C dating to be dead for 3,000 years. The limit on accurate 14C dating is around 50,000 years, owing to the short half-life (5,730 years) of 14C. "Creationists attempt to discredit 14C dating by applying it to fossils older than 50,000 years, or in other inappropriate ways, and then showing that it yields obviously wrong dates" (Berra, 1990, 38).

The fictitious mollusk ages are described fully in Keith, 1963. The error arises because of the unusual environment in which the mollusk lives, and does not apply to organisms in normal environments. Furthermore, even for the mollusks, the maximum error is a few thousand years. Since the experimental limit on 14C is 50,000 years, the error at its worst still does not leave room for a young earth.

2.2: The ages of rocks are determined by the kinds of fossils they contain, but the dating of the fossils depends on evolutionary assumptions. The use of the old age of rocks to support evolution is thus a circular argument. The absolute age of rocks is accurately determined by the use of radioisotope dating. It is true that the relative ages of strata were determined prior to radiometric dating, partially by fossil content, but radiometric dating has shown these relative dates to be correct. The absolute dating by radioisotopes have yielded the long time span necessary for evolution. (Brush, 1983, 64)

2.3: The rate of decay in the geomagnetic field sets an outside limit of 10,000 years for the age of the earth. "...only the dipole-field strength has been 'decaying' for a century and a half... the strength of the nondipole field (about 15 percent of the total field) has increased over the same time span, so that the total field has remained almost constant. [Creationist physicist] Barnes' assumption of a steady decrease in the field's strength throughout history is also irreconcilable, of course, with the paleomagnetic evidence of fluctuations and reversals [in the geomagnetic field]"(Ecker, 1990, 105). Evidence of the reversals have been found in the magnetic orientation of rock on the sea floor.

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2.4: If the earth were as old as geologists say, uranium decay would have put more helium into the atmosphere than we currently find there.The extra helium, like normal helium and hydrogen, is terribly light and escapes the earth's atmosphere into space. Thus, helium quantities in the earth give no evidence at all for the age of the earth, and we must look elsewhere - to sediment deposition rates or radiometric dating, for instance - to establish this age. (Berra, 1990, 127)

More resources


2.5: There are places where "older" rock strata lie above "younger" rock strata. Normal geological processes thrust older layers on top of younger layers in certain regions. These processes leave discernible effects which geologists can detect. Creationists seek to repudiate overthrusting by hiding the evidence for it from their audiences (Eldredge, 1982, 105-108).

2.6: Radiometric dating is extremely inaccurate, as is shown by the fact that such experiments frequently have error factors of a few million years. "A few million years sounds like a huge error, but a couple of million years one way or the other is a small error compared with the huge age calculated. Saying '380 million years plus or minus two million' is like thinking back to April from December and saying you can't remember whether something happened on the 19th, 20th, or 21st" (Eldredge, 1982, 103). Note that even with an error factor of a few million years, radioisotopes consistently show that the earth is billions of years older than the young-earth creationists assert.

2.7: Many radiometric dating tests have yielded false results. Evolutionists discard all those that are inconsistent with their prior assumptions and keep those that "verify" their theory. There have been thousands of dating tests performed by independent laboratories with a wide variety of radioisotopes. Virtually all of the results correlate with evolutionary expectations. The few anomalies in radiometric dating disappear when the samples are reanalyzed (Eldredge, 1982, 103).

2.8: Radiometric dating reports the earth to be old only because the cataclysmic action of Noah's Flood changed the radioisotope concentrations in the young earth. If a worldwide cataclysmic flood had changed the radioisotope concentrations in terrestrial rock, one would expect radiometric dating to yield a completely haphazard distribution of ages as one tested rock strata progressively deeper in the earth. However, in actuality, lower strata consistently date older than higher strata (except where overthrust has occurred). A second line of evidence against creationist speculation about the Flood's action on radioisotopes comes from the dating of meteorites and moonrock. Unless the waters of the Flood somehow engulfed the entire solar system, meteorites and moonrock would surely have been untouched by the Flood, so their radioisotope concentrations could not have been affected by this alleged catastrophe, even if the Flood had actually occurred. Yet moonrock and many meteorites yield radiometric dates of around 4.5 billion years. So independent of the fact that there is no evidence for a worldwide Biblical Flood, and much evidence against such an event, the creationist claim that radioisotope concentrations were distorted by the Flood has been falsified.

2.9: Noah's flood was caused by the condensing of a vapor canopy that contained the waters of the flood. Prior to the flood, the vapor canopy also extended people's lifespans to the huge ages listed in Genesis, because it blocked out harmful UV rays. Consult my companion work Letter to a Korean Missionary for a response to these claims.

2.10: Niagara Falls is moving upstream at a known rate each year. Its current location allows only about 5,000 years since the time it started eroding. This criticism is puzzling: even if the figures it offers are correct, it does nothing to establish a young Earth unless one buys into the obviously unfounded assumption that the Earth cannot be older than Niagara Falls.

Origin of Life

3.1: The law of biogenesis states that life comes only from previous life. Therefore prebiotic synthesis - which states that life first developed from nonliving molecules - contradicts a major law of science. Creationists represent biogenesis as a rigid law with universal scope, when, in reality, it is merely a guideline that amounts to saying that spontaneous generation (the assembly of fully formed organisms out of inanimate material in short periods of time by purely natural processes) does not occur. The slow, stepwise process of prebiotic synthesis and the all-at-once process of spontaneous generation are not comparable. The creationist claim that the "law" of biogenesis precludes prebiotic synthesis is analogous to the obviously false assertion that quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity are invalid because they "violate" Newton's physical laws.

3.2: Amino acids in living organisms are all left-handed, but in nature, equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed amino acids form, so one would expect them to occur in equal proportions in living organisms if abiogenesis were true. Ian Stewart claims that the violation of mirror symmetry by the weak nuclear force can account for the specific handedness of amino acids. He writes:

One remarkable consequence of [the violation of mirror symmetry by the weak force] is the fact that the energy levels of molecules and that of their mirror images are not exactly equal. The effect is extremely small: the difference in energy levels between one particular amino acid and its mirror image is roughly one part in 1 x 1017. This may seem very tiny, but...symmetry breaking requires only a very tiny disturbance. In general, lower-energy forms of molecules should be favored in nature. For this amino acid, it can be calculated that with 98% probability the lower energy form will become dominant within a period of about a hundred thousand years. And indeed, the version of this amino acid which is found in living organisms is the lower-energy one. (Stewart, 1995, 90)

3.3: Nucleic acids cannot replicate without the help of proteins. Proteins, however, cannot form unless specified by nucleic acid sequences. Thus, genetic systems could not have started naturally. RNA sequences are capable of forming and replicating without the assistance of proteins. These RNA sequences may also catalyze protein formation. As Martin Olomucki notes:

There is nothing to contradict the notion that the primordial RNAs may have promoted the polymerization of...the amino acids...nucleic acids may, by a reaction similar to the one leading to RNA polymerization, have been able to facilitate the polymerization of amino acids by supplying a suitable catalytic center and sacrificing one phosphodiester bond to permit the formation of a peptide bond (Olomucki, 1993, 74-75).

3.4: There are n! (n-factorial: n x n-1 x n-2 x...x 1) ways of an enzyme or DNA strand of n parts forming prebiotically. Since the smallest proteins have at least 100 amino acids, the chance of forming a particular enzyme prebiotically is at most 1/100!, which is small enough to be disregarded. The two main flaws with this argument are that (1) enzymes of many different configurations can have identical or very similar effects (we do not need to form any particular enzyme), and that (2) enzymes in prebiotic situations are not the product of haphazard collisions of compounds, but are gradually built up over time by selective forces, and sometimes created in the first place by nonrandom processes (Fox, 1988). These two points demonstrate that the chance of forming a useful enzyme is certainly not n!.

3.5: Even though the Earth is an open system, the second law of thermodynamics still poses an insuperable barrier to abiogenesis, since order in an open system will increase only when there is a complex system (such as a host of enzymes or a supernatural creator) to influence the reactions. An increase in order in the absence of such a complex system would be like sunshine causing loose parts in a junkyard to assemble itself into a pickup truck. Chemicals and biomolecules function much differently in the presence of energy than do pieces of scrap metal in a junkyard. Many atoms and molecules spontaneously and non-randomly join together to form larger molecules, especially in the presence of added energy. At high temperatures, mixtures of amino acid monomers spontaneously polymerize and form primitive cell-like structures called protocells, the microfossil remains of which may have been found in Precambrian rock (Fox, 1989).

Many important biochemicals including amino acids and nucleotides have been produced in experiments and found on meteoritic material. Spectroscopic data even reveals the existence of organic molecules in interstellar gas clouds; concerning these chemicals, Martin Olomucki notes that

...in many of the organic interstellar molecules we find compounds which are precursors of biological molecules: hydrogen cyanide, which can generate amino acids and nucleic bases; formaldehyde, the precursor of sugars; cyanoacetylene, an important condensation agent, etc. These molecules are able to form even under extreme conditions of temperature and high concentration of interstellar media. Apparently ubiquitous in the Universe, they must certainly have existed on the surface of the primitive Earth, as well as on other planets: traces of amino acids, which are already more complex chemicals, have been identified in lunar dust and meteorites. (Olomucki, 1993,47; see also Miller, 1992, 17-20).

Research has yielded a host of autocatalytic molecules, some of which present characteristics like imperfect replication (no one wants perfect replication from reproducing molecules - otherwise diversity could not be generated) and even recombination (Rebek, 1994).

The 2nd law of thermodynamics is thus shown by experiment to be no barrier to the natural emergence of complex structures from simple ones. It should be noted that, in the first place, the 2nd law of thermodynamics says nothing about open systems requiring catalysis by an already complex system to become complex themselves - this is a concoction of the creationists misleadingly presented by them as an original part of the real scientific law.

Biological Evolution, Mutations, Speciation

4.1: Chromosome numbers cannot change without producing very harmful effects. Although changes in chromosome numbers can produce harmful effects, they do not universally do so. As William Klug and Michael Cummings write,

While the chromosome number is commonly regarded as invariant for a given species, the arrangement of chromosomal material is often polymorphic through chromosomal inversions and translocations. These chromosomal aberrations usually have little direct effect on the phenotype because gene content is rearranged but not altered." (Klug, Cummings, 1983, 528)

4.2: The perfection of the structures of the various life forms on earth clearly reveal themselves as the work of an intelligent designer. Nowhere is this more evident than in the unbelievably complex human eye. The human eye is actually quite flawed. The photoreceptors in the eye are upside down, with their blood vessels and neurons in front, effectively causing deficiencies in human vision, including a "blind spot" caused by the hole where the neurons exit the eye. The squid's eye, on the other hand, has none of these problems. Are we to believe that a designer whose "crowning creation" was man made such an incredible error in the construction of the human eye, and not in that of the squid? (Diamond, 1985)

Imperfect engineering is apparent in far more than the human eye. Useless and inefficient structures abound in the natural world - flightless birds with hollow bones, as if adapted for flight; blind animals with useless lenses and retinas; the clumsy "thumb" of the giant Panda; introns; the vestigial pelvis of pythons and whales (Futuyma, 1983, 198-200). If these structures did not arise through evolution, they could only have been the work of a deranged or clumsy creator.

But could any complex structure - even an imperfect one - arise through evolution? Certainly no one has documented the gradual development of the eye or the feather, but we can look to the gradations in the present world for clues. In fact, nature displays progressions of simple to complex visual structures (Ecker, 1990, 65-66), and a scale-to-feather progression (McGowan, 1984, 116-121), such that one can see how the gradual development of complex structures could be possible. Ian Stewart notes that a computer simulation by biologists Dan Nilsson and Susanne Pelger has bolstered the case for the natural evolution of the eye by small steps:

[Nilsson and Pelger's 1994 computer analysis] starts with a mathematical model of a flat region of cells, and permits various types of "mutation." Some cells may become more sensitive to light, for example, and the shape of cells may bend. The mathematical model is set up as a computer program that makes tiny random changes of this kind, calculates how good the resulting structure is at detecting light and resolving the patterns it "sees," and selects any change that improves these abilities. During a simulation that corresponds to a period of about four hundred years - the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms - the region of cells folds itself up into a deep, spherical cavity with a tiny irislike opening, and, most dramatically, a lens. Moreover, like the lenses of our own eyes, it is a lens whose refractive index - the amount by which it bends light - varies from place to place. In fact, the pattern of variation of refractive index that is produced in the computer simulation is very like our own. So here mathematics shows that eyes definitely can evolve gradually and naturally, offering increased survival value at every stage. More than that: Nilsson and Pelger's work demonstrates that given certain key biological faculties (such as cellular receptivity to light, and cellular mobility), structures remarkable similar to eyes will form - all in line with Darwin's principle of natural selection (Stewart, 1995, 22).

Richard Dawkins adds that Nilsson and Pelger used conservative assumptions about the amount of variability in populations and the heritability of new traits when setting up their simulation (Dawkins, 1996, 165). Nevertheless, the simulation showed that "it would take only about 364,000 generations to evolve a good fish eye with a lens"(Dawkins, 1996, 166), where 364,000 generations translates to less than half a million years in time (Dawkins, 1996, 166) - a geological instant which would be difficult to detect in the fossil record.

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4.3: Evolutionists cannot tell us exactly how most organisms/structures arose. For instance, no one can explain what series of mutations could have given caterpillars the ability to metamorphose into butterflies. Certainly no one knows all of the tiniest details of evolutionary history (exactly which genes mutated at exactly what times to cause morphological change). But the validity of the general process of evolution is established well enough to assure one that every organism has gained its qualities through evolution as long as a general account can be made of how those qualities arose, even if the minutiae are unknown.

This response may not be satisfying to creationists at first, but one might ask such a creationist whether she can describe the exact spatial location of every footstep of Jesus as he presumably carried his cross at Calvary? Of course, no one can. Can we conclude (on these grounds alone) that the story of Jesus's crucifixion is false? Obviously not. We do not need to know the exact stepwise details of a process to know that the process is valid.

Evolutionists can account for many, many structures with considerable ease, as long as they are not held to the unreasonable criterion of absolutely exact knowledge. As Douglas J. Futuyma writes, "[o]ne of the most amazing aspects of evolution is how easy it is to account for major transformations through rather simple changes in developmental processes. Most of the differences among different kinds of mammals are quite simply accounted for by changes in the relative rates of growth of different parts of the body. Speed up the elongation of fingers to get a bat wing; slow down the development of teeth or legs to reduce or eliminate them in whales; slow down the growth of the lateral toes and increase that of the middle one to get a horse's hoof" (Futuyma, 1982, 63-64).

The evolution of butterfly metamorphosis specifically is not very well understood, but this is hardly damning evidence against evolution. Since evolution accounts so well for other processes and structures, creationists would have to show that butterfly metamorphosis is evolutionarily impossible, and this they cannot do. Even creationists admit that the metamorphosis of the butterfly is a natural process, not requiring the direct intervention of God to work. If, as creationists generally assume, evolution would have to first produce a halfway metamorphosis before it can produce a full metamorphosis, then evolution is in trouble. However, evolution does not need to produce a halfway metamorphosis. All it has to do is produce a slightly less sophisticated metamorphosis and gradually move on to more complex ones. If the creationist admits that a metamorphosis to x is a natural process, why not a metamorphosis to something slightly less x-like? (Domning, 1994, 11)

4.4: The genetic variation in populations that allows them to adapt to environmental change through microevolution (as revealed in industrial melanism and bacterial antibiotic resistance) was deliberately put in place by the creator. This creationist assertion contradicts the story of Noah's Flood, which creationists also hold to. Presumably, only a single male and female of all the "kinds" on earth (except for the birds and the "cud-chewing" kinds) were taken into Noah's boat, and the rest perished. Given that each organism has at most two alleles for each gene locus, that would yield a maximum total of four alleles per gene locus per kind. We know for certain that there are far more than four alleles per locus for many loci in modern populations. These extra alleles must have emerged through mutation, as they could not have been set in place in a Genesis-style creation. An example of allele number that directly contradicts Genesis 1 and 2, is locus HLA-DRB1 - one gene in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex - which has 59 alleles (Ayala, et al., 1993, 78). If all humans descended from Adam and Eve, and no new alleles ever arose though mutation, the current human population would have at most only 4 alleles at this locus (two from Adam, two from Eve).

Experimentation with bacteria has also shown that antibiotic resistance can and does arise from beneficial mutation, rather than being already present in the bacteria. "For example, Joshua Lederberg did an experiment in which he grew thousands of colonies of genetically identical bacteria from a single bacterial cell that was unable to survive in the presence of streptomycin. He divided each colony of cells in two, and grew one half with and one half without streptomycin. A few of the colonies survived on streptomycin, because they carried new mutations for streptomycin resistance" (Futuyma, 1982, 137). Since the bacterium from which the resistant colonies evolved was not itself streptomycin resistant, Lederberg's experiment proves that resistance is generated by a mutation, and is not a quality that needs to be present in bacteria from the start.

 

4.5: Homologous features do not prove any ancestral relationships between organisms, because all classifications above the species level are man-made and arbitrary. Where taxa with fine differences are concerned, the classification of a species may be a bit contrived (as is the case with transitional forms), but there are clear major differences between most taxa from genus to kingdom level. Still, the homologies persist throughout all taxa, so either they were made by a deceitful creator, or else they constitute real evidence that all taxa share ancestry. Classification may be a human endeavor, but the similarities and differences between various organisms because of their degree of relatedeness constitute a reality independent of however we choose to make our classification system. (Ruse, 1982, 309-310).

4.6: Industrial melanism does not demonstrate evolution at all because no speciation occurs. Industrial melanism was never intended as an example of speciation, but rather as an example of changes in gene frequency through natural selection. However, changes in gene frequency do constitute evolution, albeit not macroevolution. Textbooks are not fraudulent in claiming that industrial melanism, antibiotic resistance, and pesticide tolerance are examples of evolution.

4.7: Mutations are universally deleterious, and thus cannot be a driving factor in evolution. On the contrary, some mutations have been shown to be incredibly beneficial. For instance, as George Bakken reports:

Microorganisms have acquired new enzymes that allow them to metabolize toxic industrial wastes never occurring in nature (e.g. chlorinated and flourinated hydrocarbons), and are an increasingly important method of pollution control (Ghosal et al., Science 228: 135-142, 1985). Susumi Ohno (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 81:2421-2425, 1984) found that one such new enzyme, nylon linear oligomer hydrolase, resulted from a frame-shift mutation. Frame-shift mutations scramble the entire structure of a protein, and so the enzyme is a random construct! As would be expected, this new enzyme is imperfect and has only 1% the efficiency of typical enzymes, but the important thing is that it works (Bakken, n.d.).

Since the mutation documented by Ohno permits the microorganisms in question to consume short nylon oligomers as a primary food source, it certainly qualifies as a beneficial mutation. Interestingly, this mutation has been duplicated in the laboratory. Richard Harter reports:

In the experiments, non-nylon-metabolizing strains of Pseudomonas were grown in media with nylon oligomers available as the primary food source. Within a relatively small number of generations, they developed these enzyme activities. (Harter, 1999)

Another example comes from researchers working with the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, who have identified "four genes that, when mutatated, can make these worms use energy more efficiently, feed and swim at a slower pace - and live many times their normal life-span. Some of the experimental nematodes lived for almost 2 months, far longer than their expected 9 days" (Pennisi, 1996, 949; see also Lakowski, 1996, 1010-1013).

Yet another recent example, pertaining to humans:

Population geneticist Stephen O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute, his NCI colleagues Michael Dean and Mary Carrington, and their collaborators provide strong confirmatory evidence that people who have two mutant copies of the gene for CCRS (also known as CKRS), the chemokine receptor that HIV uses when it initially infects infects white cells, are highly resistant to HIV infection. Another, entirely new, finding is that people who get infected with HIV, but have one mutant copy of the CCRS gene, progress to AIDS more slowly than do people without the mutation. (Cohen, 1996, 1797)

Even some of the most seemingly deleterious mutations can have great adaptive value in certain environments. For instance, mutations that cause stunted wing growth in Drosophila increase the fly's ability to survive on islands where high winds are present (Ruse, 1982, 92). This demonstrates a critical point, and explains why decades of irradiating Drosophila in the laboratory produced only less fit mutants: in a population's normal environment, all possible beneficial mutations will have long since spread through its gene pool. Thereafter, in the same environment, virtually all mutations must be deleterious, because the population is already extremely well adapted to its environment (Moore, 1983, 11-13). Mutations are almost universally deleterious in a population's normal environment. But the same mutations that are deleterious in the "normal" environment may be beneficial on the geographical fringes of a population, or in the event of a massive environmental change throughout the entire geographical range of the population.

Even certain classes of macromutations can have adaptive value. Richard Dawkins presents an example with snake vertebrae:

The number of vertebrae in different species of snakes varies from about 200 to 350. Since all snakes are cousins of each other, and since vertebrae cannot come in halves or quarters, this must mean that, from time to time, a snake is born with at least one more, or one fewer, vertebra than its parents. These mutations deserve to be called macro-mutations, and they have evidently been incorporated in evolution because all these snakes exist. (Dawkins, 1996, 103)

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4.8: There are plenty of records of mutations causing birth defects, but none of mutations causing "birth improvements." As Edward E. Max writes:

Does the fact that we know many human detrimental mutations but essentially no clear beneficial ones mean that there are have been no beneficial mutations in human history? Not at all, since there is a clear bias in what medical scientists have studied. The human mutations we know most about are detrimental because medical scientists preferentially study illnesses that cause significant morbidity and mortality. Consider the theoretical possibility that a beneficial mutation has occurred in a particular human gene; even if this mutation were identified by a comparison of the mutated gene in a child versus the unmutated version of the same gene in both parents, there is no way that this mutation could ever be recognized as beneficial. If the mutation increased intelligence, strength, longevity or specific disease resistance, this would never be apparent without long-term breeding experiments that could obviously never be done on humans. Therefore, since such beneficial mutations in humans could never be recognized in humans, our ignorance of examples cannot be taken as evidence that they don't exist. However, the experiments necessary to demonstrate a beneficial mutation can be done with laboratory organisms that multiply rapidly, and indeed such experiments have shown that rare beneficial mutations can occur. (Max, 1999)

The situation is actually better than Max describes. As described in 4.7 one mutation in the gene for CCRS causes one to progress slower from HIV to AIDS, and two mutations in the same gene increases ones resistance to infection by HIV in the first place (Cohen, 1996, 1797).

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4.9:The rate of mutation is so small that it could never serve as a source of variation. According to Philip Kitcher:

 

The charge that mutations are rare depends on confusing the mutation rate per locus (on the order of 1 mutation per 100,000 loci) with the rate per zygote (of the order of 1 mutation per zygote) or the rate per population (of the order of 1 billion per population). From an evolutionary perspective, it is the last of these rates that is important. Hence, although [it] is right to claim that mutations are rare (in one sense), [it] is quite wrong to think that this spells trouble for evolutionary theory. Indeed, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory insists on the rarity of mutation at any individual locus, claiming, for this reason, that natural selection is a more powerful evolutionary force than mutation (if mutation were extremely frequent, then selection would play a less crucial role). (Kitcher, 1982, 97)

 

 

Although mutation without natural selection cannot transform a population, natural selection causes beneficial mutations to spread quickly through a population. Moreover, if a mutant allele is only detrimental in homozygous form, it will take many generations to eliminate it from the gene pool, even if the homozygous form is lethal (Ruse, 1982, 79-84). This fact and heterozygote fitness (cases in which the heterozygote has an advantage that neither homozygote has - a case example is the sickle-cell allele, which protects against malaria in heterozygous form), which may perhaps be the norm, help to keep populations supplied with a reservoir of mutant genes, some of which will have an advantage over the "normal" alleles in the event of environmental change. Populations do not have to wait around for lucky mutations after environmental change - the mutants are already in the gene pool.

4.10: Macroevolution remains unproved because no one has observed it. In fact, macroevolution is in principle unobservable, so evolution must be unscientific. Although information in experimental science is gained through observation, the observation of a great amount of indirect evidence of a process makes as good a scientific case as the direct observation of a process. As Michael Ruse says, "[t]he evidence that I have a heart is all indirect, neither I nor anyone else has ever seen it, but does anyone really believe that it is not a fact that I have a heart? Of course it is a fact..." (Ruse, 1982, 58). In the same way, there is so much indirect evidence for macroevolution that it can safely be considered a fact without direct observation of the process occurring in our time.

4.11: No one has ever seen one species arise from another. In 1964, Dr. D.J. Reish removed 5 or 6 polychaetes (Nereis acuminata) from Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor, and grew his sample to a size of thousands. In 1986, four pairs from this group were brought to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; the population at Woods Hole thus had gone through two bottlenecks, which are supposed to help drive evolution through genetic drift. In 1977-1978, two new cultures of N. acuminata were gathered from nearby Long Beach and Newport Beach, and grown under the same conditions as the Woods Hole sample. The three populations were later crossed, and it was found that the only crosses that would not produce viable offspring were the crosses involving Woods Hole and the two new cultures. This signifies nothing less than speciation, and all in the laboratory - all observed directly (Weinberg et al., 1992).

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4.12: If evolution were true, then fish would have evolved into amphibians and land animals more than once. Fish are, in fact, continuing to evolve. One should not, however, properly expect them to evolve fully into amphibians again, because the niche they would be exploiting is already occupied by the first amphibian lineage. D.H. Patent explains:

Many animals of today appear to be in transition between life in the water and life on land. These organisms can survive at least for limited periods of time in either environment. But we cannot say what the future holds for them. We do not know if they are "on the way" to a terrestrial existence. The chances are, in fact, that they are not really evolving away from an acquatic existence. A species cannot take over a niche that is already occupied by another unless it is in some way better adapted to that niche. Since present land animals have been evolving for millions of years, they have become about as well adapted to land living as possible; a newcomer which is trying to "fit in" is not likely to displace them."(Patent, 1977, 58-59)

4.13: Sexual reproduction could not have come about through evolution. Howard Hershey has the following to say about the evolution of sex (he warns that he is stating all of this from memory, but believes it is a simple task to check his statements in any genetics or developmental biology textbook):

Recombination (a key element of meiosis that differs from mitosis significantly enough to warrant new activities) also occurs in bacteria (which don't have sex as we eucaryotes know it). The bacterial enzymes involved are called the RecA, RecB enzymes. These are enzymes that are also involved in DNA repair. he RecA enzyme in particular is involved in repair of UV damage. Almost any molecular biology or genetics book will talk about the Rec system. Recombination in eucaryotes is very similar but the enzymes are not as well studied. But topoisomerases (enzymes that break and reseal DNA) are clearly involved and these enzymes have a long evolutionary history.

But the key thing to remember is that sex (in the biological sense) is simply the passage from the diploid (2N) state to the haploid (1N) state and back again by fusion. Undoubtedly what these creationists mean is "How can we create two sexes that are so different from one another?" An interesting question when posed by a three-year old but one that ignores the fact that some creatures have an even more dramatic differentiation between the sexes than humans do and some have much less.

The passage of the sexual cycle does NOT require two highly differentiated sexes producing specialized gamete cells. Yeast, for example, are sexual animals just as much as humans and it is hard to distinguish haploid cells from diploid and the difference between the mating types (when the haploid gametic cells are visually indistinguishable from each other they are called mating types; when one is differentiated to hold most of the cytoplasm it is an egg and the other less endowed cell is a sperm with males being sperm carriers and females being egg carriers). There [are] all kinds of variations in nature between the yeast and mammals (although fish carry sexual dimorphism to an extreme unseen in mammals).

Even within humans, sex is not a case of being different from the moment of conception. The early human embryo (XY male or XX female) is sexually dimorphic (has both embryonic male and female parts). Normally a single gene (on the Y) sets in motion a cascade of events that leads to the emphasis of the male internal parts (Wolfian ducts) and degeneration of the female parts (Mullerian tract). Absent that gene, the male parts degenerate and a female develops. Most of what we call male and female traits are purely hormonally caused and depending on the hormonal environment you can get interesting events. I have a lovely picture of a busty young woman who is XY (she has a defect that makes her cells unable to respond to androgens). Internally, she is sterile because the genes that determine the degradation of the Mullerian tract are different. She also has no pubic hair (because that requires a cellular response to androgens). There are also XX individuals with various levels of penis and (empty) scrotum formation because of in utero exposure to androgens (the mothers had a tumor or took certain steroidal drugs). The external genitalia equivalents are very simple scrotum = labia and penis = clitoris. There are all kinds of intermediate situations since this is a question of different differentiation of organs rather than de novo creation of different organs. All this (and much more) can be found in most textbooks of development or genetics. But, amazingly, most creationists seem completely ignorant of these basic facts and somehow think that male and female were created separately. (Hershey, 1996)

4.14: There is no evidence for the rapid development of new species in nature. 3,500 years ago, a small lake was separated from Lake Victoria by a sandbar. There are now five species endemic to the new lake; they have evolved from the original species in a geological instant (McGowan, 1984, 29). A population of Nereis acuminata that was isolated in 1964 was no longer able to interbreed with its ancestors by 1992 (Weinberg et al., 1992). New species certainly can emerge quickly.

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4.15: Natural selection is tautological: the fittest survive, and those who survive are the fittest. Robert Pennock reveals the fallacy in this objection with a pentetrating analogy:

 

Consider the formula: May the best team win. It seems harmless, but the creationist now points out that we determine which team is best by seeing which wins. If that is what it means to be "best," then the expressed wish seems to reduce to "May the team that wins be the team that wins." It is thus vacuous dogma, objects the creationist, to subsequently claim to explain who won in terms of one team's being "better" than the other. However, we sports fans are not fooled into abandoning the game by such arguments. Of course we do determine which is the best team by looking at its record of wins, and we would certainly explain why it won the trophy by noting its superior record over its rivals. But we understand that this is not the end of the story...even though we do judge on the basis of record, we do not doubt that it is the physical traits of a team, its superior characteristics and playing ability, that make it better than the others. Understanding this, we also understand that it is possible that the best team might not win...This parallels the distinction that biologists make between evolution by natural selection and evolution by natural drift, and the mere fact that we recognize such distinctions is by itself sufficient to show that the tautology objection does not hold in either sports or evolutionary theory. (Pennock, 1999, 101)

 

 

One can predict in advance what characteristics will be beneficial for an organism living in certain environments (Kitcher, 1982). For instance, it is quite apparent before selection occurs that the melanic peppered moth will have better chances of survival than its mottled grey counterpart when they compete in polluted areas, where the white lichens normally on the trees have been killed, leaving a black bark surface. This is readily apparent, but not tautological. Mere survival does not define fitness - alleles that increase in frequency in a population do not necessarily do so because they confer greater fitness upon their hosts; some alleles increase in frequency because of genetic drift and bottleneck effects. Organisms that outlive their peers due to sheer luck and happenstance are not automatically fitter, even though they are the survivors.

Michael Ruse lists three testable assumptions to which every Darwinian must commit: (1) that there is a struggle for reproduction, (2) that success in the struggle depends upon the characteristics of organisms (rather than being random), and (3) that selection will favor the same characteristics under the same circumstances (Ruse, 1982, 140).

4.16: Organisms feature numerous "irreducibly complex" structures and processes, which could not have developed via small evolutionary steps. Evolutionists have not even tried to explain how such structures and processes could evolve. According to Michael Behe, an irreducibly complex system is "a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning"(Behe, 1997). However, there is no reason why such systems could not evolve. Allen Orr explains, somewhat abstractly at first:

An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become--because of later changes--essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. (Orr, 1998)

As Orr notes, gene duplication often provides the route by which irreducibly complex processes arise:

Molecular evolutionists have shown that some genes are duplications of others. In other words, at some point in time an extra copy of a gene got made. The copy wasn't essential--the organism obviously got along fine without it. But through time this copy changed, picking up a new, and often related, function. After further evolution, this duplicate gene will have become essential. (Orr, 1998)

Not only are there mechanisms whereby irreducibly complex systems can be gradually evolved, but Russell Doolittle (who was very unfairly criticized in Behe's book) also describes experimental proof that one of Behe's favorite examples of an irreducibly complex system (the blood-clotting process) is not even irreducibly complex to begin with:

Recently the gene for plasminogen was knocked out of mice, and, predictably, those mice had thrombotic complications because fibrin clots could not be cleared away. Not long after that, the same workers knocked out the gene for fibrinogen in another line of mice. Again, predictably, these mice were ailing, although in this case hemorrhage was the problem. And what do you think happened when these two lines of mice were crossed? For all practical purposes, the mice lacking both genes were normal![a footnote here refers to Bugge et al., "Loss of Fibrinogen Rescues Mice from the Pleiotropic Effects of Plasminogen Deficiency," Cell 87 (1996): 709-19.] Contrary to claims about irreducible complexity, the entire ensemble of proteins is not needed. (Doolittle, 1998)

As for the claim that evolutionists have not even tried to posit and research mechanisms whereby allegedly irreducibly complex systems could have evolved, John Catalano gives short shrift to that claim with a huge (and expanding) catalog of articles presenting precisely such research.

For extensive links to articles by and on Michael Behe and his cavalcade of irreducible complexity, see John Catalano's Behe's Empty Box . For a beautifully illustrated critique of Behe along the same lines as Orr, see Keith Robison's Darwin's Black Box: Irreducible Complexity or Irreproducible Irreducibility?

4.17: Given uniform population growth rates, we can extrapolate backwards from today's population to prove that there could not have been humans before 10,000 years ago. According to Robert Pennock:

 

While application of the principle of uniformity makes good sense when speaking of radioactive decay or random mutation, it does not work so simply given what we know of the history of human population size...Data on other animal species in nature reveal that population size is typically highly variable, with cycles of increase and decrease that average to a growth rate of zero, which is what scientists believe held for most of the early history of the human species as well. It was only the advent of agricultural production, the development of permanent settlements and cities, and the introduction of mechanization that allowed the rate of human population growth to depart significantly from this norm to achieve exponential increase. (Pennock, 1999, 225)

 

4.18 Haldane's Dilemma proves that humans could not have evolved over the time span evolutionists say they did. I actually have not been able to assess this claim myself yet, but since quite a few people have written to me about it, I will list some other web sites which discuss it:

Paleontology, Fossils, Transitional Forms

5.1: The feather impressions in fossils of Archaeopteryx are forgeries. Modern feathers were pressed into a thin layer of artificial cement to give the impression that a dinosaur fossil had feathers. After astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle made these accusations, a team of scientists applied a battery of tests to the holotype of Archaeopteryx lithographica to prove the authenticity of its feather impressions (Charig et al., 1986). They found absolutely no evidence of artificial cement on the fossils. One test involved the comparison of hairline cracks running through the impressions on both the slab and counterslab; the negative of a photograph of the counterslab superimposed on a photograph of the slab revealed a perfect correlation between the hairline cracks. The comparison "shows that the block was cracked through vertically before it was split horizontally into two slabs, thus indicating the unquestionable absence of any added cement layer on either surface" (Charig et al.,1986, 624). Detailed examination of the feather impressions through scanning electron microscopy revealed "a degree of minute detail that we believe would be impossible to carve, even today, and a total absence of any chisel marks"(Charig et al., 1986, 624).

It is worth noting that Hoyle claimed that the fossil was actually that of a reptile with fake feather impressions around it (Charig et al., 1986, 623), underscoring just how reptilian Archaeopteryx is, in contrast to the creationist assertion that Archaeopteryx is "just a bird." With the feather impressions proven authentic, one of Archaeopteryx's prime avian qualities is also reaffirmed, so the fossil remains solidly established as a transitional form.

5.2: Archaeopteryx is not a transitional form but a full-fledged bird. Any reptilian characteristics it displays are mirrored in modern birds such as the hoatzin. Archaeopteryx lithographica is indeed a transitional form. It has been classified as a bird almost arbitrarily because it has feathers, not because it is "truly" a bird. The avian features Archaeopteryx possesses are

  1. a wishbone
  2. feathers
  3. a bony sternum in one of the latest specimens (Svitil, 1994).

Archaeopteryx has many more reptilian characteristics, such as

  1. a pubic peduncle
  2. a long, bony tail
  3. no pygostyle
  4. three well-developed fingers (with the same number of bones as in most dinosaurs)
  5. three well-developed metacarpal bones
  6. unfused metacarpal bones
  7. separate metatarsal bones
  8. no hypotarsus
  9. abdominal ribs (list from McGowan, 1984, 117).

Archaeopteryx has many more reptilian characteristics than the hoatzin. Even Fred Hoyle, who erroneously claimed that Archaeopteryx was a forgery, claimed that it was a reptilian fossil with fake feather impressions. But the objection by analogy to the hoatzin is entirely off track anyways. Archaeopteryx is not a transitional form merely because of its remarkable blend of reptilian and avian characteristics - Archaeopteryx also existed at the same time as the theropod reptiles and resembled them very highly (Futuyma, 1982, 188). Given its temporal and physical correlations to reptiles, plus its less numerous - yet distinct - avian qualities, Archaeopteryx lithographica stands immune to any creationist attack.

5.3: Protoavis precedes Archaeopteryx in the fossil record, so Archaeopteryx cannot possibly be a transitional form. This creationist challenge falsely presupposes that only one lineage of reptiles evolved into birds or bird-like reptiles, when, in fact, there is more than one such lineage. Given this fact, Archaeopteryx will continue to demonstrate how the alleged "boundary" between reptiles and birds can be bridged, even if Protoavis turns out to be an earlier avian life form than Archaeopteryx (which is not yet certain). The validity of Protoavis is simply irrelevant to the validity of Archaeopteryx as a transitional form. (Wheeler, 1993)

5.4: The Cambrian explosion is a sure sign of the activity of the Creator, suddenly creating a multitude of complex forms out of nothing. There are no fossils before the explosion. There are plenty of fossils of organisms that lived in the Precambrian, such as jellyfish, coelenterates, annelids, and even cyanobacteria that date back as far as 3.4 billion years (McGowan, 1984, 103). The Cambrian period marks the advent of shelled organisms like trilobites and brachiopods. The ancestors of the organisms appearing in the Cambrian explosion were soft-bodied and did not leave fossils as easily as the shelled Cambrian organisms. Precambrian rocks are also subjected to a disproportionately large amount of deformation, which destroys fossils. It is for these reasons, not creation, that the fossil record seems to display a sudden "explosion" of shelled organisms at the base of the Cambrian. Moreover, the "explosion" took around 15 million years, so it is not quite the instantaneous event creationists would expect, and is definitely inconsistent with young-earth creationism (Ecker, 1990,46-48), since young-earth creationists hold that the earth is no more than several thousand years old - far less than the time involved in the Cambrian explosion.

5.5: All of the explanations of gaps in the fossil record, such as the invocation of punctuated equilibrium and the low probability of fossilization, render the evolutionary prediction of transitional forms unfalsifiable. Punctuated equilibrium and the low probability of fossilization are both scientific explanations for the scarcity of transitional forms, and are not characterized by the contrived nature so evident in the creationist's use of the "appearance of age" and "test of faith" ploys. The evolutionist's explanations for gaps in the fossil record are derived from experimental data and an understanding of natural processes, and must be reasonable to become accepted by the scientific community. The fact that there is much debate about punctuated equilibrium clearly shows that the scientific community is not desperately clutching at straws. Note also that all evolutionists still predict the existence of at least some transitional forms, as opposed to the creationist's predictions of none. If we still did not know of any transitional forms today, after more than a century of paleontological research, the idea of transitional forms would be adequately falsified. But given the numerous transitional forms that have indeed been found, all falsifiable forms of creationism find themselves falsified.

5.6: Fossils are the remains of the living organisms that perished in Noah's Flood. The fossil record thus lends no testimony to evolution or an old earth. R.J. Schadewald lists six arguments that cast great doubt upon the validity of the flood:

  1. the Karoo Formation contains the remains of some 800 billion vertebrate animals. If one conservatively estimates that the Karoo Formation contains a mere 1% of all of the vertebrate fossils on earth, this means that before the flood the earth would have held 2100 vertebrates of varying sizes per acre.
  2. If marine fossils comprise 0.1% of the volume of sedimentary rock, this means that before the Flood these organisms would have covered the earth to a depth of at least 1.5 feet.
  3. The varves of the Green River formation would, by the standard interpretation, take 20 million years to form. For the varves to have been formed during the Flood by shallow flows of mud-laden water (as the creationists conjecture), would have necessitated a sequence of 40 million flows covering tens of thousands of square miles every two-thirds of a second.
  4. Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives - being the only human occupants on the Ark (Genesis 6:18, 7:13) - must have carried all of the diseases specific to man in their bodies, were the disease organisms to survive the Flood. Given that only two of most of the animals of each kind were on board, some of the specific disease organisms known today would have been wiped out by the eventual immunity of the two.
  5. Hydraulic sorting during the Flood would have caused large trilobites to have always been found in lower strata than small trilobites, because of hydrodynamic drag properties. This is not what is actually found. Victim habitat and mobility arguments are similarly shown to be wrong by the fact that fossils of flowering plants - despite their relative immobility and their existence at all elevations - never appear before the Cretaceous era.
  6. There are overturned strata, explainable by conventional geology, but impossible to explain by the working of the Flood. How could the Flood cause upside down raindrop craters and brachiopod burrows? (Schadewald, 1983, 448-453)


5.7: In their search for transitional forms, the evolutionary community has been taken in by outright fraud, as in the case of Piltdown Man, which was accepted as a valid specimen for 40 years, and by unfounded speculation, as in the construction of Nebraska Man from what later turned out to be a pig tooth. This shows how unobjective evolutionists are. Regarding Piltdown Man, W.L. Strauss reports: "It may be wondered why 40 years elapsed before the hoax was discovered. Two factors enter here: first, there was no reason at all to suspect the perpetration of a fraud, at least, not until fluorine analysis indicated the relative recency of the specimens, thus making the association of a human cranium and an anthropoid-ape jaw, either anatomically or geologically, hardly credible; and, second, methods for conclusively determining whether the specimens were actual fossils or faked ones short of their wholesale destruction, were developed only in recent years" (Strauss, 1954, 580). There is no gap in the charts of human ancestry were Piltdown Man used to be. Numerous australopithecine finds have firmly established Australopithecus where the single Piltdown specimen once stood.

The creationists, too, have had their share of frauds, and have foisted them upon the public with apparently deceitful intentions. A good example are the Paluxy River tracks - a smattering of presumably human footprints among dinosaur tracks, intended to prove that man and dinosaurs were contemporaneous. All of the "human tracks," displayed in deliberately poor quality photographs by creationists (to make it more difficult to tell what the tracks really are), can be shown to be one of three things:

  1. parts of dinosaur tracks
  2. erosion holes
  3. contemporary human carvings (Scott, n.d.).

The Paluxy "man-tracks" have been denounced even by some creationists, but continue to be exhibited in creationist literature.

The "construction" of Nebraska Man may be conceded as a serious mistake on the part of a single, overzealous scientist. Countless other hominid fossils, however, have stood the test of time, and supply ample evidence for human evolution. And at least no evolutionist today cites Nebraska Man as evidence for evolution, unlike the creationists, who continue to cite the "Paluxy footprints" long after their real nature has been exposed. One might also note that the creationists, too, have fallen prey to wild speculation in the reconstruction of hominids. For instance,

[Reverend Carl] Baugh and his associates appeared on an area television station's evening news claiming that a Cretaceous fossil tooth found at Dinosaur Valley State Park was human and thus invalidated the standard geological column. They later recanted when microscopic examination demonstrated that the item in question was a fossil fish tooth...(Eve, 1991, 129) [emphasis added]

5.8: There are no adequate transitional forms between fish and amphibians. The crossopterygian fish Eusthenopteron is linked to the early amphibian Icthyostega by a number of characteristics:

  1. same pattern of skull bones as Icthyostega
  2. internal nostrils (found only in land animals and sarcopterygians --a greater taxonomic group encompassing lungfish and crossopterygians)
  3. teeth like amphibians
  4. a two-part cranium (icthyostegids are the only other vertebrates that have this characteristic)
  5. same vertebral structure (list from McGowan, 1984, 152-153)

Moreover, studies of the skeletal characteristics of Acanthostega, the most primitive tetrapod known (at 360 million years of age) reveal that "tetrapod anatomy evolved while our ancestors lived exclusively underwater - and it evolved for life underwater. The first vertebrate that walked onto land didn't crawl on fish fins; it had evolved well-tuned legs millions of years beforehand" (Zimmer, 1995, 120). Acanthostega has arms "poorly designed for support" (Zimmer, 1995, p. 124) yet functional enough in water, allowing the creature to pull itself along the bottom of plant-rich coastal lagoons, and also making the creature superior at ambushing prey compared to fish, which must remain afloat by keeping their fins "in constant motion, kicking up easily detected waves" (Zimmer, 1995, 126). Additionally, Acanthostega, despite being a tetrapod, has a hearing system more similar to fish than to land-going creatures, and breathed like a fish (Zimmer, 1995, 125). Paleontologists have also "found fragments from five more tetrapods, all of which were roughly contemporaries of Acanthostega and some of which were more advanced and thus closer to a terrestrial life" (Zimmer, 1995, 126).

See the Transitional Vertebrate Fossil FAQ for more information.

5.9: There are no adequate transitional forms between reptiles and mammals. Two genera (Probelesodon and Massetognathus) of the cynodonts, a small subdivision of the synapsids, display characteristics of both reptiles and mammals, as well as qualities that are ambiguous. The reptilian features are:

  1. lower jaw comprises several bones
  2. jaw joint formed between articular and quadrate bones
  3. small cranium
  4. ribs in neck region
  5. number of bones in fingers and toes exceeds 2,3,3,3.

The mammalian features are:

  1. teeth specialized for different functions
  2. lower jaw with prominent coronoid process
  3. double condyle at back of skull for neck articulation
  4. axis with odontoid process
  5. ilium slopes forward

The ambiguous characteristics are:

  1. cheek teeth have simple cusps
  2. jaw joint formed between hollow in the lower jaw and flat surface in the skull
  3. prominent ribs confined to chest region, but there are short ribs in front of the pelvis
  4. legs not splayed, but not vertically beneath body either (list from McGowan, 1984, 138).

Probainognathus, another genus of the cynodonts, has both reptilian and mammalian jaw joints, and shows the first step in the change of the reptilian jaw joints into the mammalian ear ossicles. This does away with the creationist charge that a reptile-mammal transitional form could not have chewed its food while its jaw was being unhinged and repositioned for hearing (McGowan,1984, 139). Also, Probainognathus would have had no trouble hearing during rearticulation, as reptiles exploit the transmission of sound from the ground through their jawbones (Kitcher, 1982, 111).

See the Transitional Vertebrate Fossil FAQ for more information.

5.10: There are no adequate transitional forms between early hominids and Homo sapiens. I defer this criticism to Jim Foley's definitive Fossil Hominids FAQ.

Philosophy of Science, Educational Issues

6.1: It is likely that many structures in the universe were created with the appearance of old age. This is in accordance with the way God created things in Genesis - even man was created in adult form, so why not the rest of the universe? The first notable appeal to "appearance of age" was made in the Victorian era by Philip Gosse in his book Omphalos. But, as John Barrow and Joseph Silk report, "Not surprisingly, even the Victorians were not eager to embrace Gosse's idea of a Creator who performed such sleight of hand" (Barrow, 1993, 4). The morality of a creator who makes the world appear old in every respect, yet expects us to believe that it is actually young, is uncomfortably suspect.

Moreover, if one regards as plausible the notion that everything was made with the mere appearance of age, there is little to stop one from accepting that everything - the Bible included, of course - was brought into existence only a few hundred years ago by Satan, or even that the universe came into existence a few hours ago complete with us and our memories (Abell, 1983, 34). Old-earth creationist Hugh Ross concurs with this analysis:

Taken to its logical conclusion, the appearance-of-age hypothesis would imply that we cannot establish the actuality of our own or others' past existence. We could have been created just a few hours ago with the Creator implanting scars, memory, progeny, photographs, material possessions, liver spots, and hardening of the arteries to make us appear and feel older than we really are. Also, if God built into the universe natural testimony of events which never took place, how can we claim the Bible is free of written testimony of events which never took place? (Ross, 1994, 40)

Creationists would no doubt be dismayed to have such scenarios on equal standing with their Biblical account of creation. However, since there is no way to test the world for appearance of age, and the idea has no explanatory power, real scientists rightfully pay little attention to it. (Abell, 1983, 34).

Creationists might object that the actuality of the old age of the universe is as unfalsifiable as the "appearance of age" concept, on the ground that a reliance upon empirical data is as much a matter of taste as a reliance upon the authority of a book. However, science is by definition based in empiricism, and a simple application of Occam's razor eliminates the unnecessary ontological load of "appearance of age."

6.2: Evolution teaches that there are no such things as souls, that the Bible is fraudulent, and that God does not exist. These charges, even if they were true, have nothing to do with the scientific validity of evolution. Such accusations reveal the true religious motivations of the creationists, and their eagerness to confuse scientific issues by the inappropriate discussion of metaphysics when a religious audience is around.

In any case, however, the charges are false. Science, by definition, is unable to reveal anything about the supernatural. While the historical sciences do contradict a naively literal interpretation of Genesis, it is ridiculous to assert that this makes them anti-Bible, anti-religion, or anti-Christianity. Carl Sagan reports that

Modern Roman Catholicism has no quarrel with the Big Bang, with a Universe 15 billion years or so old, with the first living things arising from prebiological molecules, or with humans evolving from apelike ancestors - although it has special opinions on "ensoulment." Most mainstream Protestant and Jewish faiths take the same sturdy position. (Sagan, 1995, 278)

Pope John Paul II's Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996, supports Sagan's claim.

Chris McGowan emphasizes that "The majority of Christians regard the book of Genesis as a collection of parables which illustrate the point that there is a God, a God who has dominion over the world... The issue is not one between Christians and evolutionists, but between a vociferous Christian minority - the creationists - and evolutionists" (McGowan, 1984, 1-2). Exemplifying this, in McLean v Arkansas, "officials of the United Methodist, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, and Presbyterian Churches, the American Jewish Congress, and many other clergy and religious groups" (Bakken, n.d.) opposed the "balanced treatment" law that would have given creationism equal time with evolution in Arkansas science classes. Clearly evolution is quite compatible with many religions, Christian and otherwise. Given the evidence for evolution and certain biblical peculiarities - particularly the incompatibility of the two Genesis accounts - there is good reason to believe that Genesis 1 and 2 are allegories rather than factual accounts, and that God is an irresponsible or wicked deceiver if one of the two stories is a factual account. This makes any evolutionist - even an atheistic one - a more righteous upholder of God than the creationists.

6.3: Great scientists such as Newton and Kepler believed in a literal Genesis. Newton died in 1727 - 132 years before Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, and 17 years before Lamarck was even born. Kepler died 12 years before the birth of Newton. Clearly, Kepler and Newton had no exposure to a solid theory of evolution. It is wrong - but typical - for the creationists to judge modern scientists on the basis of the incomplete knowledge of those long deceased.

6.4: Evolutionists are trying to take over the school system and force their beliefs upon the students. "There is no law that mandates the teaching of evolution, and there should not be, yet it is practically universally taught in universities and colleges around the world. The theory of evolution is what is taught because it is what best explains the data in a rational manner." (Berra, 1990, 139-140) Creationists, however, have visibly used legal channels to try to force their beliefs into the school system. Two of many examples are:


6.5: Natural processes cannot be the cause of qualities seen in humans like love. For instance, the cause of love must be something loving.If it were a rule that the cause of x must be x-like, that would imply that manure, one cause of the growth of "tasty and nutritious" rhubarb, must itself be tasty and nutritious (Ruse, 1982, 305). Michael Shermer asks "If [the cause of x must be x-like], should not nature then have a natural cause, not a supernatural cause?!" (Shermer, n.d., 4) Furthermore, there is every reason to believe that even our most sacred, poetized behavioral qualities can be reduced to natural processes. For instance, researchers have demonstrated a strong connection between natural amphetamines and the emotion of love (Toufexis, 1993, 50).

6.6: There are many theories of evolution, each of which "conclusively disproves" the other. Ernst Mayr lists the five major elements of Darwinian theory as:

  1. the notion that organisms are transformed over time
  2. the common descent of all organisms
  3. the multiplication of species through speciation
  4. gradual as opposed to saltationary change of populations
  5. natural selection as the driving force behind change (Mayr, 1991, 36-37).

All evolutionary theorists - whether gradualists, punctuationalists, or whatever - understand and accept (1), (2), and (3). There is indeed disagreement about (4) and (5), but all sides recognize that there is conclusive evidence for (1), (2), and (3) no matter what tempo or mechanism of evolution one supports. As it turns out, article (2) is the central issue in the creationism vs. evolution debate, so the debate over (4) and (5) does not help the creationists at all, and is not a sign of weakness in evolutionary theory.

With respect to the alleged conflict between punctuationalism and Darwinism specifically, it is helpful to note that

 

[w]ith time, the controversy was diffused. Population geneticists showed that even gradual selection within populations could produce evolutionary change that would appear virtually instantaneous on a geological time-scale, such as that defined by the fossil record. [Punctuationist Stephen Jay] Gould backed awar from some of his flirtations with non-Darwinian evolution. The main people who felt that something big had really happened were the editors who put together cover stories for popular magazines, as well as the rabble of anti-Darwinians, including creationists, who are often happy to celebrate confusion among the Darwinians.

 

The consensus now is pretty much where Darwin was. We expect evolution to be sedate in biological time, but its results can be fairly abrupt and disjointed in the fossil record. (Rose, 1998, 88-89)

 

 

If a multiplicity of mechanistic theories poses a problem for a greater theoretical framework, then the creationists are in worse trouble than the evolutionists, as there are more creationist theories than evolutionary theories. To name a few, there are:

And these are only a sample of the Christian "theories" of creation - there are other religions with other creation theories.

6.7: Evolution is unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific. A haphazard chronological distribution of fossils of varying complexity in the fossil record, or a non-DNA based genetic code for advanced organisms, are just two examples of findings that could falsify evolution. Creationism, on the other hand is completely unfalsifiable by practicing creationists, as they assume from the beginning that their interpretation of the Bible is completely factual, and readily twist around in the most absurd fashion any evidence that contradicts their hypothesis. Their stance is not surprising, however, seeing that those unhindered by a belief in Biblical infallibility find countless disproofs of creationism. In short, then, creationism in any falsifiable form has already been falsified, so the creationists choose to keep it in an unfalsifiable, unscientific form by adding shoddy theological articles to their premises.

6.8: Electrons are materially inconceivable, but physicists largely accept them as real entities. So what is to keep one from accepting the reality of an inconceivable Creator? Though "materially inconceivable", electrons have specific qualities from which one can predict their existence and behavior. A creator, on the other hand, can act as arbitrarily as it wants, so it cannot be understood even in the mathematically rigorous manner of the electron. This makes hypotheses involving electrons falsifiable, but hypotheses involving a mysterious "Creator" unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific.

6.9: The exclusive teaching of evolution in the science classroom violates the teaching of multiculturalism, because many different cultures have creation myths which contradict evolution. The teaching of mutliculturalism is fulfilled in humanities and social science classes, in which creation myths can be taught as the cultural/historical elements they are. Myths of any sort do not belong in the science classroom, where only science is to be taught.

Creationists, of course, are not really interested in multiculturalism, anyways - they do not push for equal time for all creation myths, but only for their own Biblical myth. Neither do they attempt to advance multiculturalism in their own Christian schools by giving equal time to the myths of other religions.

6.10: Evolution predicts that natural law should be constantly evolving, as opposed to the creation model, which states that law should stay fixed. This is entirely untrue. Evolution is a theory that itself fits only into a framework of fixed natural law. Creationists, of course, contradict themselves when they make this claim, since they are willing to distort the natural rates of processes like radioactivity and sedimentation to save their young-earth concept (Ruse, 1982, 305).

6.11: Nothing can be proven, particularly events in the past. Therefore, creationism must be just as reasonable as evolution. Although absolute proof of just about anything is impossible, there are certainly things that are more reasonable and better supported than others. For instance, given that there is no absolute proof that you will fall if you jump off a cliff (who knows when the force of gravity might reverse itself for reasons unknown to mere mortals?), is it reasonable to jump? Past events are no less susceptible to support than anything else - if someone claimed that one thousand years ago people who jumped off cliffs never fell, would it be reasonable to believe him? It is possible, of course, that gravity did not function 1,000 years ago, and that all of our records to the contrary are just a fraud designed by a malicious creator, but how plausible does this sound? By no means does the impossibility of absolute proof of evolution or creationism make the two equal in plausibility. The indirect evidence for an evolutionary past far outweighs in its plausibility the creationists' collection of arbitrary assumptions.

6.12: There is nothing wrong with invoking supernatural explanations. In Methodological Naturalism and the Supernatural, I argue that it is in principle possible for certain supernatural explanations to be consistent with the scientific enterprise. However, it is worth noting that this is emphatically not to say that the supernatural explanations creationists tend to offer are good ones, or that they are even necessarily consistent with the scientific enterprise - appealing to divine agency simply to square one's theory with contradictory data, as the creationists do, is not legitimate scientific use of the supernatural - if a creationist advances supernatural explanations just to patch up holes in her "theory" of creation, an evolutionist could equally easily advance supernatural explanations for evolution (i.e. "in the past, all mutations were beneficial, but the laws that made this so are no longer in effect"). Both types of appeals would ultimately end up halting the scientific enterprise.

6.13: There are many unanswered questions in science, such as the details of the origin of the universe and of prebiotic synthesis. Thus we require a supernatural God for explanation. This argument is entirely antithetical to the nature of science. Just because a question is currently unanswered does not mean that it cannot be answered, and that we should shrug our shoulders and embrace the supernatural on faith. History has shown us time and time again that science eventually finds solutions to its problems. If we concoct a supernatural explanation every time we run into a problem, science, and probably civilization, will be completely corrupted. In any case, if we were to accept the supernatural, then anything would be tenable - we would not be forced to accept a particular creation theory. In the realm of the supernatural, there is as much reason to believe in creator-pixies, or in a universe that supernaturally came into existence all on its own, as there is to believe in any Genesis-style creation.

6.14: Evolution is just a theory. The colloquial use of the word "theory" corresponds more or less to the scientific word "hypothesis." A hypothesis is a proposition or explanation that is not at all certain, and demands evidence prior to acceptance. In scientific circles, the word "theory" is much more than a hypothesis. "A scientific theory is the endpoint of the scientific method, often the foundation of an entire field of knowledge..." (Berra, 1990, 4). Calling evolution "just a theory" is an attempt to discredit the obvious by confusing colloquial and scientific terminology. Evolution is a theory in the same sense as Copernican theory (the theory that the earth goes around the sun), the theory of gravity, electromagnetic theory, quantum theory, and the theory of relativity. One cannot say of evolution that it is just a theory any more than one can say it of these other theories.

6.15: Evolution and creationism are the only two possible models of origins. There are many serious problems with evolution, so creationism is the correct model by default. Certainly evolution is either true or false, and creationism is likewise either true or false, but it does not follow from these two premises that "either evolution is true or creationism is true." There are, in fact, always an infinite number of "models" that can account for any scientific data.

Examples of alternatives to both creationism and evolution include:

Clearly, one must not make a choice between evolution and creationism - there are many proposals that serve as an alternative to both.

Also, even if creationism and evolution were the only two alternatives, it is not sound scientific practice to rely upon fault-finding as a means of advancing one's own hypothesis. The creationists point to many alleged problems with evolution, but even if these problems were real (most of them, as I have already shown, are not), that would not be sufficient to prove creationism true - creationism has its own difficulties, so unless the creationists can amass as much positive evidence for their proposal as evolutionists have for theirs, creationism will remain less plausible.

The creationists rely upon rhetoric and obscurantism so much because they can never come up with good evidence for creationism - so far, not one of the few creationist research papers ever submitted to a scientific journal has merited publishing. Note that creationists have, incidentally, submitted very few papers to scientific journals in the first place, so there is absolutely no evidence that their papers are rejected for discriminatory reasons.

6.16: Evolution is the basis for Naziism, laissez-faire capitalism, slavery, etc. As a scientific theory, evolution is morally neutral. It tells how the world is, not how it ought to be. As such, attempts to draw moral doctrines from evolutionary theory typically misunderstand the capabilities of science, and more often than not end up abusing rather than using evolution. As Philip Kitcher notes:

 

Various people have appealed to the theory of evolution to lend respectability to their appalling moral views...But this fact says very little about evolutionary theory itself. Virtually any morally neutral, or even morally good, doctrine can be misused for evil purposes. (Kitcher, 1982, 196).

 

 

Creationists, most of whom are Christians, should be able to understand the point by considering some of the moral doctrines for which Christianty was the "basis," and asking whether this means Christianity is evil or incorrect:

 

The most popular doctrine for use in rationalizing evil and immoral actions has surely been Christianity. There is a long record of brutalities and atrocities perpetrated in the name of Christ: the Crusades, the persecution of the Huguenots, periodic waves of anti-Semitism, sporadic witch burnings, the Inquisition, 300 years of Irish "troubles"; the list could go on and on. Add to this the explicit racism of some contemporary Christian sects, the repressive moral doctrines imposed by the Church at many times in the past, the denials of justice and human rights in the name of the 'divine right of Christian princes."

 

 

 

Yet although the Christian Church has a checkered history, it is evident that Christians can claim--quite justifiably--that the evils result from perversions of religious doctrine: Evil or misguided men have twisted the Gospel to evil ends...But if charity ought to be extended to the Christian doctrine, then it is equally appropriate for evolutionary theory. Both the Bible and evolutionary theory can be misread and their principles abused. (Kitcher, 1989, 197-198)

 

 

Turning to some of the specific charges, Carl Sagan, taking up laissez-faire capitalism and Naziism, correctly notes that

 

Voracious robber barons may explain their cutthroat practices by an appeal to Social Darwinism; Nazis and other racists may call on "survival of the fittest" to justify genocide. But Darwin did not make John D. Rockefeller or Adolf Hitler. Greed, the Industrial Revolution, the free enterprise system, and corruption of government by the monied are adequate to explain nineteenth-century capitalism. Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, social hierarchies, the long history of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Versailles Treaty, German child-rearing practices, inflation, and the Depression seem adequate to explain Hitler's rise to power. Very likely these or similar events would have transpired with or without Darwin. And modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barns and Führers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival. (Sagan, 1995, 260).

 

 

Extending Kitcher's point above, it may pay to note the causal impact that doctrine derived from the Bible had on the Holocaust:

As for slavery, Robert Pennock points out that:

 

The evil of slavery was perpetrated long before the theory of evolution ever arose. Certainly evolutionary theory itself does not justify slavery, and Darwin himself was an adamant abolitionist who wrote "How weak are the arguments of those who maintain that slavery is a tolerable evil!" Sadly, among the most common proslavery arguments were those made by Christians who quoted Leviticus (25:44-46), 1 Timothy (6:1), and a variety of other scriptural passages to show that slavery was endorsed by the Bible. Indeed, creationists should know that it was once common to cite Genesis (9:27), in which the righteous Noah curses his son Ham and his descendants to be slaves, as the "creation story" of slavery. (Pennock, 1999, 315-316)

 

 

Does the fact that doctrine derived from the Bible was used for evil purposes indicate that Christianity is actually evil or false? Then how do similar facts indicate that evolution is evil or false? In fact, the situation is worse for Christianity than it is for evolution, because while the Bible does contain explicit moral commands, evolution is, once again, a purely descriptive theory. And how can it be, as Pennock points out above, that evolutionary theory "led" to effects which existed before evolutionary theory was developed?

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Acknowledgements

Special, albeit belated, thanks goes out to Douglas J. Futuyma, the appendix to whose outstanding book, Science on Trial, provided the initial inspiration for this document.

I would like to express heartfelt appreciation to the many people who have written letters of thanks, encouragement, and advice, and to those who have given me pointers to new information or personal research. In particular, I would like to thank William B. Provine, Anthonie Muller, Nigel Arnot, John Davison, Chris Stassen, and Larry Taylor for their input. I would also like to thank Brett Vickers and the many affiliates of talk.origins for permitting me to link extensively to their archive from this list.