Arguments against evolution

Answer 1

There are many arguments against evolution. These are often propounded by people of a number of religions, proponents of the pretending-to-be-unreligious Intelligent Design movement, people who do not understand evolution and have not been properly taught about it and, no doubt, people who pick up arguments against evolution from people who give them the idea that evolution is something to be against and the anti-evolution arguments themselves have scientific merit.

Evolution is a theory. Richard Dawkins wants to call it a fact. It is a fact. Dawkins proposes the word theorum for evolution. I like the phrase 'body of fact' or 'megafact' which is a word I now coin.

Evolution has much evidence to support it. But it is an origins-theory. It explains the origins of species. The realm of Bibles and religions came about before Darwin and his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and seemed to claim originofspecies-explanation as its own. Origins-explanations are dear to people simply by being origins-explanations. They are even dearer if they are ruled by a beloved omnipotent omniphilic religious entity such as a god.

Thus the ungodguided appearance of evolution offended those who knew the godguided creation stories. Since then, offended people have been, offendedly, ejaculating many arguments against evolution. Some stray into the scientific as opposed to religious realm, perhaps since the offendeds first noticed sciences inability to build explanation and scientific theory out of supernaturalism.

Arguments against evolution include:

The Bible says that God created life, and separately (in six days).

Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics.

If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

Life cannot evolve from 'pond-scum'.

There is not a single transitional form.

Earth is too young to support the theorised lengthy periods of evolution.

Evolution is 'just a theory'.

Evolution leads to Atheism, immorality, suicide, misery..... Just look at atheists like Hitler.

Evolution is a religion as it must be 'believed' in.

To my knowledge, many religious people, fundamentalists who believe literally that everything was created in 6 days are so religious, so convicted that they won't even listen to scientists or even a more (to them) harmless passer-by who happens to have read something about evolution. They go near nothing that remotely challenges creationism or suggests a godlessness for the Universe.

They may be interested in science, but their knowledge can only be peripheral and basic as they (if they exclude evolution from consideration) often reject continental drift, old-earth geology (which is all of geology), abiogenesis, the existence of dinosaurs and other pre-Modern organisms and the big bang standard model of the origin of the Universe. Perhaps some even refuse to consider stellar processes such as nucleosynthesis. How can this lead to a full appreciation of what science has and can work out about the Universe. What sort of science-knowledge is this?

Richard Dawkins points out that denouncing of evolution may not come directly from thinking evolution is unlogical but from a moral-holding (god-ruled morals no doubt) opinion of 'ungodguidedness is immoral'. Still, science finds supernaturalism (as said above) untenable and so these offended fundamentalists, creationists or religionists have to attack evolution with science. All their anti-evolution arguments are untenable, useless and invalid. Is it their peripheral appreciation and knowledge of all of science that makes this so?

Below is an explanation of why all the arguments I listed above are invalid.

The Bible does say that God created all life. To a comparative religion studier, this would be referred to a creation myth. Science rejects God because he is undetectable and supernatural and needs faith to think he exists, possibly a concession that such an object does not exist on the part of the religious. Also, the lengthy time-periods of geology and the fossil record do not support a 6 day creation.

The violation of the second law of thermodynamics is not so. If biological processes that involved reproduction and growth and generation-progression violated this law then no organism would ever get beyond the zygote stage.

Humans did not evolve FROM today's apes, nor specifically from chimpanzees (closest relative to humans). Humans evolved WITH chimpanzees. Life evolves by common ancestry. There was a Chimpanzee-Human common ancestor and further back in time a Gorilla-Chimpanzee-Human common ancestor and further back in time an Orangutan-Gorilla-Chimpanzee-Human common ancestor. Humans evolved from a single twig of the ape branch of the tree of life. Evolution does not proceed as a complete transformation of one species into another (like all chimpanzees suddenly becoming humans or giving birth to humans) leaving a disappearance of the 'parent' species behind.

'Pond-scum' or Kent Hovind's disparaging 'lightening on mud' or (with regards to the big bang) 'all the dirt in the Universe) are statements of absolute unscientificness. There is no such thing as scum or dirt in science. Science talks about elements and gives them names (such as oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and silicon). Life is formed from elements. Cells are formed from elements. Life can evolve once a nucleic acid is enclosed/delimited/contained in a membrane. That is all that needed to happen.

There are indeed transitional forms like Archaeopteryx. There are lineages alive today that give clues as to transitions, like hoatzins, platypuses, lungfish and coelocanths, hippopotamuses, Australopithecus and welwitschias (which give clues as to the origins of angiosperms).

Earth-age is a matter of geology. But evolution theory needs it since evolutionary processes take a long time. Earth is not 6000 years old as the Bible-literalists claim. Earth is 4 600 million years old. The uranium dating mechanism that was used to measure this is no doubt inaccurate by a few hundred million years. This is about 1% of the total magnitude of the age and is thus negligable. Earth is very very old. The way of measuring Earth as 6000 years old was done by examining ages of humans in the Old Testament. This presumes that humans have existed for the entireness of Earth's history. However to measure something's age it is better to measure the age of what that something is made of (rock in Earth's case). One cannot measure something peripheral (like human-age, humans just being on the surface). If measuring age were done like this, the age of a wad of cheese would be measured by the age of the mould growing on that cheese or a person's age would be measured by measuring the length of time they'd been wearing that morning's shirt.

The 'just a theory' argument shows lack of understanding of 'theory'. Theories are all-incorporating explanations that tie together many facts. Hypotheses are promoted to theories only when confirmed by convincing evidence. It is appropriate to say 'just a hypothesis' of something of course. And of course that would be inappropriate for evolution, which is a theory and not a hypothesis. Hypothesis is almost synonymous with guess. Theory is almost synonymous with fact.

Evolution suggests ungodguidedness perhaps. I admit that religion exists as a comfort for humans in a frightening universe. However, if evolution is the truth we must not shy away from it obviously. Then we have a true explanation of the biological world's diversity! To think there is a god is faith and so regardless of what science you accept god can still be imagined for comfort. To the thinking person and the common sensical person, atheism may well abound in their thoughts and knowledge of the universe anyway, regardless of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Is evolution depressing? Mindless mutations locked into existence nonrandomly by selection or eliminated? Look at the beauty of life's biodiversity. One must not fail in the imagination just because a process is mindless. Evolution has great power. Theodosius Dobzhansky said 'Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of evolution'. The 'Origin of Species' has the words 'Out of the war of Nature' and out of this emerges Darwin's evolved 'forms most beautiful'. There is constant action and colour and wonder in the world of life, of animals, plants, genetics, ecosystems and the beautiful biosphere as a whole. Why would anyone be sad about that. All life has a life-force just like you, selected by Natural Selection. Can all life appreciate life as much as we do?

Does evolution (as the Theory of Evolution) lead to Hitler-persons and their vicious killings of fellow humans? I'm sure many people will agree that Hitler was a horrible git (we could always be ruder and about Hitler is the place to be so) no matter how you slice it. Hitler's horribleness surely has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is an innocent description of life-adaptation and change and diversification. If Hitler produced atrocities after having heard of evolution, it must be remembered that Hitler was horrible and ghastly no matter how you slice it. Maybe the Hitler argument is simply used by serious anti-evolutionists trying to incite moral outrage. Notice that it is not against the mechanisms of gene frequencies and mutation and Natural Selection and species diversification. It is just against a theory which says nothing of God and morality and Bible-said statements and thus regards it as immoral/ungodly.

Finally, evolution is not a religion. It is a science. When it is said 'Scientists BELIEVE that Earth is 4 600 million years old' or 'Scientists believe that endosymbiosis took place' or 'It is believed that all life has a common ancestor', that word BELIEVED means 'thought sensible and logical' and 'is thought a good account of what occurs in reality', 'is thought a good description of the world'. It is not religious at all as it is based on evidence and logic and common sense and knowledge and not faith.

All arguments against evolution arise from faith-based contempt for nonfaithful, nonreligious science-explanation. All of them are completely invalid.

Evolution remains a perfect fully-supported theory, which explains the origins and diversifications of 'Darwin's forms most beautiful', the beauty of life....

Answer 2

Here are some arguments for Creation or against Evolution.

These point to Divine Creation:

• The staggering complexity of every organ and every cell in the human body.
  
• The vastness of our minds and emotions.
  
• The fact that the universe has definite design, order, and arrangement which cannot be sufficiently explained outside a theistic worldview. (This is how Abraham, without benefit of teachers, came to reject the chaotic world-view of idolatry and the possibility of atheism). For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies (whose early writings were not especially sympathetic to theism) states concerning the fundamental structure of the universe, "the impression of design is overwhelming" (Davies, 1988, p. 203).

• The laws of the universe seem to have been set in such a way that stars, planets and life can exist. Many constants of nature appear to be finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical.
  

See: More detailed evidence of Creation

Also:

1) The glaring lack of transitional fossils has been noted by the evolutionists themselves, such as this statement from the famous paleontologist and evolutionist George G. Simpson; quote: "The regular lack of transitional fossils is not confined to primates alone, but is an almost universal phenomenon."
"The lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real; they will never be filled" (Nilsson, N. Heribert).
"To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation" (Corner, E.J.H., Contemporary Botanical Thought).
2) Instances of falsifying of evidence by evolutionists, such as Haeckel's drawings, Archaeoraptor, the Cardiff "specimen," and Piltdown Man.
"Haeckel exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions, in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent. His drawings never fooled embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. The drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the standard student textbooks of biology. Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because textbooks copy from previous texts. We do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks (Stephen Gould).
Dr. Jonathan Wells published a book in 2002 entitled Icons of Evolution. Dr. Wells states that the book shows that "the best-known 'evidences' for Darwin's theory have been exaggerated, distorted or even faked."

3) Creationists see the "survival of the fittest" and the dating of rock layers by fossils as being perfect tautologies.

4) The fact that some qualified, educated, normal scientists do not believe in evolution. Or at least question it, even if they still preach evolution: "Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species" (Dr. Etheridge, Paleontologist of the British Museum).
"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. It amazes me that this is swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without murmur of protest" (Sir Ernest Chain, Nobel Prize winner).

5) The fact that there is a shared, worldwide tradition among every ancient society that the world was created.

6) Evolving of new organs or species has not been witnessed during known history.

7) Mutations are harmful, not beneficial. One of the tasks of DNA and of long-term breeding is to avoid or repair any changes brought about by mutations. This means that our genetic apparatus is programmed to resist change.

8) Mutations, even if beneficial, do not create new organs.

9) The fact that a great number of fossils have been found in the "wrong" rock-layers according to what evolutionary Paleontology would require.

10) The fact that you need DNA to make DNA. No genetic code can be demonstrated to have arisen by chance, together with the ability to read that code and carry out its instructions. Information does not arise spontaneously; and there is an incredible amount of information in even the tiniest cell.
"A living cell is so awesomely complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations" (Michael Denton, author).
"The astounding structural complexity of a cell" (U.S. National Library of Medicine).
Concerning a single structure within a cell: "Without the motor protein, the microtubules don't slide and the cilium simply stands rigid. Without nexin, the tubules will slide against each other until they completely move past each other and the cilium disintegrates. Without the tubulin, there are no microtubules and no motion. The cilium is irreducibly complex. Like a mousetrap, it has all the properties of design and none of the properties of natural selection" (Michael Behe, prof. of biophysics).

11) The problem of the impossibility of abiogenesis in general. "The concept of abiogenesis is not science. It's fantasy" (J.L. Wile, Ph.D.).

12) The fact that evolution was once used as support for the belief that Blacks (or others) are less than highly-evolved humans. "Darwin was also convinced that the Europeans were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races" (Steven Rose, author). He also "reasoned that males are more evolutionarily advanced than females" (B. Kevics, author).

13. The first and second laws of thermodynamics point clearly to a Creator, since things undergo entropy rather than get more orderly over time.

14. "Radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age-estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often very different. There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological clock. The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists." William D. Stansfield, Ph.D., Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University.

15. "Even total rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age." Prof. Gunter Faure (Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus.)

16 a). At current rates of erosion the amount of sea-floor sediments actually found do not support a "billions of years" age for the Earth.
b) The amount of Sodium Chloride in the sea, also, is a small fraction of what the "old Earth" theory would postulate.
c) The Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast to extrapolate a long age for the Earth.
d) The rate of accumulation of Moon-dust has been measured; and the amount of dust on the Moon was found to be vastly less than what scientists had predicted before the Moon-landings.

See: Problems in Evolutionary astronomy

And: Evidence of a young Earth

e) Helium is generated by radioactive elements as they decay. The escape of this helium into the atmosphere can be measured. According to the Evolutionary age of the Earth there should be much more helium in the atmosphere, instead of the 0.05% that is actually there. The only way around this is to assume that helium is escaping into space. But for this to happen, the helium atoms must be moving at above the escape velocity, of 24,200 miles per hour. The usual speed of helium atoms is only 5,630 mph. A few atoms travel much faster than the average, but still the amount of helium escaping into space is only about 1/40th the amount entering the atmosphere.

This is an unsolved problem, concerning which the atmospheric physicist C.G. Walker stated: "There appears to be a problem with the helium budget of the atmosphere." Another scientist, J.W. Chamberlain, said that this helium accumulation problem "… will not go away, and it is unsolved."

Also see:

God's wisdom seen in His creations

More about God's wisdom

Dissent against Darwin

The facts

Discovering Creation

Understanding Creation

Answer 3

Lets look at some of the arguments against evolution:

Argument 1:There is no evidence for evolution There is no evidence that evolution has occurred because no transitional forms exist in fossils i.e. scientists cannot prove with fossils that fish evolved into amphibians or that amphibians evolved into reptiles, or that reptiles evolved into birds and mammals. Because of this a surprising number of contemporary scientists support the Creation theory.

Response: Fossils show a pattern of change over the ages. Just like a police show on TV you don't have to find every footprint of the criminal from the crime to his lair to be able to figure out who did it and how.

Argument 2:

History is too short Creationists argue that if the world is as old as evolution claims it is there would be

• billions more stone age skeletons than have been found
• many more historical records like cave paintings than have been found
• a lot more sodium chloride in the sea
• a lot more sea-floor sediment

Response: None of these arguments are valid. The argument is that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. All the evidence from astronomy, Archaeology, geology and physics goes against this. There are even ruins of civilisations that precede the supposed creation event.

Argument 3:

An Example of Unexplained Development: The Compound Eye The eye that enables organisms to see is so complex that no proven theories for its evolutionary development have yet been put forth. The Compound Eye "has all of the hallmarks of intelligent design and defies attempts to explain it through natural mechanisms".

Response: Almost any organ could have been chosen. Science has identified a history of eye development from light sensitive spots on clams to the present eye. The process of evolution is that individuals with small improvements survive to pass on the improved traits. It's not chance.

Argument 4:

The Biblical Accounting is Just an Allegory The Bible uses allegory to explain the creation of the earth. It is a story, so employs figures of speech and other literary devices to tell the story of how God created man e.g. Genesis "days" could also be read as "ages".

Response: This reverses all the other arguments. The Earth could be old, the changes could have been painfully slow.

Argument 5:

Evolution has no Purpose (There is no "Why?") For what purpose is all of this? Evolutionists have never offered a satisfactory explanation.

Response: The point everyone can agree with about evolution - there is no purpose except survival of the species. There is no goal of perfection. Apparently Creationists are only happy if there is a reason and everything fills its part in "The Plan"