15 Answers to “15 (Bad) Answers to Creationist Nonsense”

Michael Cheng
Sep 6, 2018 · 28 min read

Original article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don’t hold up

By John Rennie on July 1, 2002

What does “tearing down real science” mean? If merely questioning and/or challenging evolution means “tearing down real science,” then it seems the purpose of this phrase is to shut down any discussion about the issue.

Rennie clearly feels very strongly that any creationist argument is “nonsense,” which is rather closed-minded of him. It seems that he refuses to believe that a creationist can make any good point and desires to invalidate anything a creationist says, no matter how factual or insightful.

I do not believe that Rennie is intentionally being dishonest or deceptive in this article. Rather, he is simply closed-minded, self-deluded, angry, arrogant, and, I would say, wrong. He honestly believes he is correct, that all creationists are completely wrong, and that he is doing a good deed in “exposing” creationists as idiots.

However, his arguments are riddled with problems, as we will see below.

IN BRIEF

Despite definitive legal cases that have established the unconstitutionality of teaching intelligent design or creationist ideology in science class, the theory of evolution remains consistently under attack.

Two points here:

  1. What if the decisions made in these legal cases were wrong? People can be biased and fallible.
  2. The phrase, “remains consistently under attack,” is a biased way of phrasing what is going on. A more neutral way of phrasing this could be, “People who believe there are flaws with evolution are seeking to have honest and open discussions about whether evolution should be taught exclusively in schools.”

Creationist arguments are notoriously errant or based on a misunderstanding of evolutionary science and evidence.

This is quite the over-generalization.

Hundreds of studies verify the facts of evolution, at both the microevolutionary and macroevolutionary scale — from the origin of new traits and new species to the underpinnings of the complexity we see in life and the statistical probability of such complexity arising.

Well, let’s analyze these studies as they are brought up.

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 158 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt.

“beyond reasonable doubt”? That’s a bold statement.

Today that battle has been won everywhere — except in the public imagination. Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy.

Maybe they are able to persuade people because there is actually something legitimate in what they are saying.

They lobby for creationist ideas such as “intelligent design” to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. When this article first went to press in 2002, the Ohio Board of Education was debating whether to mandate such a change. Prominent antievolutionists of the day, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Darwin on Trial, admitted that they intended for intelligent-design theory to serve as a “wedge” for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

The good news is that in 2005 the landmark legal case Kitzmiller v. Dover in Harrisburg, Pa., set binding precedent that the teaching of intelligent design in U.S. public schools is unconstitutional because the idea is fundamentally religious, not scientific.

Sure, intelligent design has its foundations in religious belief. However, the real question is, “What is true?”, not “What is scientific from a naturalistic point of view?” If there is anything legitimate in what intelligent design proposes, then that should be taught.

Furthermore, the definition of “science” as being purely naturalistic and separate from anything to do with the supernatural is a relatively modern idea.

Also, just because a court makes a decision does not mean that court has determined what is objectively true. People are biased and can be wrong.

The bad news is that in response, creationists have reinvented their movement and pressed on. When they lost the ability to claim that creationist ideas are valid science, they switched to arguing that they were only supporting “academic freedom.”

Shouldn’t there be freedom for all ideas to be discussed? Rennie seems to purport that there is something uniquely sinister about intelligent design that makes it off-limits for “academic freedom” and open discussion.

Worse, to further obscure the religious roots of their resistance, they now push for “critical analysis” of climate change, cloning research and other scientific endeavors that they paint as culturally oppressive.

This is irrelevant to the topic at hand. This point seems to underscore Rennie’s bias and anger against religion and religious ideas.

Consequently, besieged teachers and others are still likely to find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism, by whatever name.

Can’t we just call this open discussion and asking questions? Why does intelligent design necessarily need to be an “attack”?

Creationists’ arguments are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution.

Again, this is a very general statement that means nothing until we actually look at the arguments.

Nevertheless, even if their objections are flimsy, the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage. The following list recaps and rebuts some of the most common “scientific” arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom. These answers by themselves probably will not change the minds of those set against evolution. But they may help inform those who are genuinely open to argument, and they can aid anyone who wants to engage constructively in this important struggle for the scientific integrity of our civilization.

It seems that Rennie himself is not “genuinely open to argument,” and that he is nothing willing for critics of evolution to “engage constructively” in discussing this issue. He simply wants the discussion to be one-sided and for any criticism of evolution to be completely shut down.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty — above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution — or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter — they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

Here’s the key question: Is there any significant difference between the “theory of evolution” and “atomic theory or the theory of relativity”? It seems clear that there is an enormous difference between these theories.

Whereas atomic theory and the theory of relativity can be directly tested and observed, evolutionary theory cannot be directly tested and observed, but is rather based on interpretations and assumptions concerning what is observed. Nobody has ever directly observed macro-evolution — people believe it because they interpret certain findings to mean that macro-evolution happened.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution.

This terminology is imprecise. Critics of evolution do not necessarily disagree with the concept of “descent with modification.” The question is, “How much modification?” Creationists agree that species can change over time. What they disagree with is that species change into other species over time.

The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.’” The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

Rennie just quoted the NAS definition as “an observation…” and then completely ignored it, saying, “Although no one observed those transformation…”

The “indirect evidence” is an interpretation of the fossil record that makes assumptions about what the fossil record means as it relates to evolution. Rennie wants people to believe that there is only one simple interpretation of the fossil record, and that this explanation is “clear, unambiguous, and compelling,” but the obvious reality is that there is a lot of complexity about and questions concerning the proper interpretation of the fossil record.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists’ conclusions less certain.

Again, here’s the key question: Is there a difference between the indirect evidence of the physicist concerning subatomic particles and the indirect evidence of the evolutionist concerning the fossil record? Yes, there is. Although subatomic particles are not directly observable, there are objective cause-and-effect experiments that can be done to determine their existence. In contrast, the fossil record does not contain such a simple cause-and-effect relationship. The interpretation and explanation for the fossil record is much more open-ended, and to purport otherwise (as Rennie does) is to be extremely irrational and blind to the reality of the situation.

Evolution is one interpretation of the fossil record (and I would argue a flawed one). It is clearly and certainly by no means the only reasonable interpretation.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

I’m curious which creationists argue against the kind of natural selection that Rennie describes below.

“Survival of the fittest” is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction.

First, let’s note that “survival of the fittest” within a species is not a concept that most creationists disagree with. So, the arguments in this section are simply straw-man arguments.

That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In pioneering studies of finches on the Galpagos Islands, Peter Grant and Rosemary Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild.

There is absolutely nothing here that a creationist would disagree with. The finches remain finches and are not changing into another species — this example is merely one of adaptation and survival, not of evolution.

The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

I’m not sure exactly who Rennie is arguing against here.

3. Evolution is unscientific because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

The second sentence above is simply true. Evolution makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

The experiments and science described below are designed to try to figure out what happened in the past.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time — changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species.

Just pointing out the use of the word “may” here — “changes that may be preludes to speciation…” Rennie doesn’t have certainty concerning what leads to “speciation, the origin of new species” (assuming it even occurs in nature).

Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

Again, let’s take note of the word “may” here — “to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.” The best conclusions we can draw from the fossil record and DNA comparisons are ultimately guesses and interpretations.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in the Grants’ studies of evolving beak shapes among Galpagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms — such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization — can drive profound changes in populations over time.

Creationists have no problem with microevolution. The phrase, “even most creationists,” seems designed to convey the idea that creationists are conceding something in acknowledging microevolution. They’re not.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 200,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominin creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not — and does not — find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

There are no references to any specific studies here, so there is no specific evidence cited for the assertions above at this point. I’d simply argue here that the “evidences” for evolution and the interpretation of these evidences are not as clear and obvious as Rennie purports.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on Earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

We don’t need such outlandish scenarios to disprove evolution. Several of the arguments that Rennie (inadequately) responds to below are strong evidences against evolution.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist, then at the University of Washington, surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. Surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss, now at Arizona State University, were similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.

Regarding these “unsolved and difficult” problems, the key question is whether any of them are fatal to the theory of evolution.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.

Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

“universal”? Obviously, not everyone agrees, which is why there is a debate about evolution in the first place.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists’ comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals — which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould’s voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

Rennie doesn’t reference any specific quotations here, so there is really nothing to analyze or respond to here.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, “If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?” New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

I don’t really like this argument either. The original argument isn’t all that logical.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on Earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry.

This paragraph is misleading at best, and dishonest at worst. Is Rennie referring to any specific experiment here that demonstrate how life “could have” formed? Previous experiments, such as the Miller-Urey experiment, that have been widely used to propagate this idea have been thoroughly debunked.

Currently there is no good theory or experiment that explains how life could have formed from no-life.

Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to Earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

There is so much uncertainty and outright silliness here. Rennie’s point simply begs the question, “If these compounds originated in space, how did they originate in space?” It’s the exact same question that has no answer from evolutionists.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science’s current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on Earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

I believe this silly “aliens introduced the first cells” idea originated with Richard Dawkins. It’s an absolutely terrible idea because again, it begs the question, “If aliens introduced the first cells, where did aliens originate from?” The exact same question remains, just one level higher.

The key takeaway is that evolutionists have absolutely no good answer to this question. If science cannot answer the question of where life originates from, then perhaps this question simply requires a supernatural explanation.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving “desirable” (adaptive) features and eliminating “undesirable” (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

The points raised in the paragraph above are all entirely theoretical and not scientific at all. What scientific study proves these points? And, let’s talk about studies that deal with macroevolution, not microevolution, which creationists don’t have a problem with.

Also, regarding natural selection, what we’ve seen in nature is that the traits that are preserved already exist, and natural selection simply weeds out the traits that are inferior for survival. We do not see natural selection producing sophisticated structures. Note that in the last sentence, Rennie says “natural selection can push evolution in one direction…” This is simply an assertion without any scientific evidence to back it.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence “TOBEORNOTTOBE.” A million hypothetical monkeys, each typing out one phrase a second on a keyboard, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison, then at Glendale College, wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet’s). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare’s entire play in just four and a half days.

Again, the example above is merely theoretical, not scientific at all, and ultimately not very relevant to the discussion. Furthermore, all of the letters already exist and are merely being rearranged — no new letters, or sophisticated structures, are being created.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun’s nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

Sure, we can accept the science concerning the Second Law and entropy. Let’s just examine the last sentence here: “Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.” A few questions:

  1. What kind of “complexity” are we talking about here? Evolving into another species?
  2. Where is the scientific evidence and studies to support this claim? Is Rennie simply making a theoretical assertion here? That’s not very scientific.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism’s DNA) — bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

This is an example of microevolution, not macroevolution. The bacteria is still bacteria — it has not gained new features such that it is now a different species.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

A few points here:

  1. The fruit flies are still fruit flies. Even with this mutation, the fruit fly did not evolve into a different species.
  2. The one example given does not actually provide any benefit to the fruit fly, and the conclusion given is that “genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.” This is just blind assertion and not based upon scientific evidence at all.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism’s DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

  1. What is the specific study concerning the “globin family of blood proteins”? Is evolution a necessary conclusion of this study, or is it merely an interpretation of what is being observed? The latter is almost certainly the answer. Did the “globin family of blood proteins” evolve from something else, or is this merely another example of microevolution?
  2. Are there any specific examples of how these mechanisms that Rennie refers to resulted in macroevolution? Rennie provides none.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

First, this isn’t science. It’s just a theory for how macroevolution could happen, and the language here is filled with uncertainty.

Second, there is absolutely no explanation here for how a species could gain features to become new species. As mentioned before, Rennie so far has provided absolutely no scientific evidence for macroevolution.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

Again, natural selection is a legitimate explanation for microevolution, but so far, there has been absolutely no scientific evidence presented so far that demonstrate how natural selection can produce macroevolution.

In response to the point concerning what “science welcomes,” a key question to ask is not, “What is a scientific way to learn how macroevolution happened?”, but rather, “What if naturalistic science, apart from anything supernatural, simply cannot explain how macroevolution could have happened, if it happened at all?” So far, there has been nothing even close in science to explaining how macroevolution could have happened.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr’s Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations — sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms’ physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection — for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits — and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California, Davis, demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

But the flies are still flies.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils — creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs.

A flock’s worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. An amazing fossil creature from 375 million years ago named Tiktaalik embodies the predicted and long-sought transition of certain fishes to life on land. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominins (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds — it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

What Rennie ignores is that there is enormous debate, and very reasonable doubt, concerning these so-called transitional fossils. These -so-called transitional fossils are not at all definitive, and they still do not explain how macroevolution could have happened.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the “molecular clock” that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

Again, what Rennie refers to are interpretations of molecular biology. Evolution is simply one proposed explanation for what scientists observe about genes in organisms. There is enough uncertainty about this topic that we cannot say that these interpretations demonstrate the “fact,” or certainty, of evolution.

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features — at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels — that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

This “argument from design” is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

What Darwin wrote here is merely a theory that has not at all been scientifically proven. How can one possibly point to these statements and say that evolution is absolutely certainly true?

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye’s ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye’s evolution — what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even “incomplete” eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)

This begs the question. How complex is the most primitive of eyes? Could something with that amount of complexity be produced by natural causes?

Today’s intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

Right. And the question of how evolution can account for the complexity of things that exist has not yet been answered. There are theories and assertions, but they do not even come close to answering the question of how natural causes could produce the complexity we see in life.

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

“Irreducible complexity” is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap — a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood’s clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum’s component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California, San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind — “specified complexity” — is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of author William A. Dembski in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

Dembski’s argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

Essentially everything stated above is conjecture and theories that provide no scientific evidence to support the idea that natural processes could produce the complexity we see in nature.

The key point is that there is an enormous amount of uncertainty, conjecture, assumptions, and possibilities regarding evolution, which undermines Rennie’s assertion that evolution is essentially fact. There should be open discussion and debate about whether evolution is even tenable as a theory that explains life, rather than a closed-minded dismissal of anything that seeks to challenge evolution.


MISLEADING SEMANTICS OF CREATIONISM

Only methodological naturalism can determine how all life came to be

“Creation science” is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism — it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover — their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

The question is whether evolution is in the same category as physics. It clearly is not. Whereas physics involves directly testable and observable scenarios that happen today, evolution involves interpretation of events that happened in the past and will never happen again.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Thus, the real question is not how evolution happened, but rather, if evolution happened, and whether science can even begin to explain the origin and existence of life. If not, then the necessary solution is beyond science, in the realm of philosophy and the supernatural, examples being religion and God.

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life’s history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion — that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

This paragraph reveals the limitations of intelligent design merely as a neutral theory. If we must turn to supernatural causes to explain the origin and existence of life, then we must have a way to find answers to the questions Rennie raises above.

All intelligent design, by itself, can do is reveal the error and limitations of evolutionary theory. To answer the questions above, however, requires a worldview that provides these answers. And determining which worldview provides the best answers to those questions enters us into the realm of philosophy.

I would argue that the Christian worldview, or the biblical worldview, most adequately answers all of these questions concerning the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the complexity of life. etc. But, this is not the right place to defend this position.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Again, the key question is, “Can any naturalistic explanation explain the origin of life, or the complexity of life?” Logically speaking, the answer is simply no. It is impossible for something to come from nothing, for life to come from no-life, or for natural causes to produce the incredible complexity we see in life.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort. — J.R.

Again, evolution is in a very different category than “the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works, etc.” Those things are directly observable and testable today. Evolution necessary requires interpretation of past events that cannot be recreated.

It’s perfectly fine that people are seeking to learn “the riddle of how the living world took shape.” The problem is with people who claim that the fact of evolution is clearly settled and that there is no room for the supernatural to be brought up at all. That perspective is simply untrue, closed-minded, and ignorant of the complexity of the question of where life came from.

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