What questions oppose evolution?

Answer 1

Answer 1

There are no serious questions in the scientific community that create a stumbling block for evolution by natural selection. One of the main sources of negative questions concerning evolution is that those who reject the idea, usually on religious grounds, think that evolution is a replacement for all aspects of Creation and therefore target, primarily, questions that Creation answers but that Evolution says nothing about.

Evolution by natural selection only asserts that each creature, even each sex within the same creature, and the general environment exerts a selection pressure on every other creature. These selection pressures will guide a species to center on a particular variant within the species best suited for the environment. That variant will then become the new base and the selection pressures will narrow again. Over millions of years, this will result in species going extinct completely or in one area and being replaced by a different but similar species. Eventually, this will result in creatures significantly different than the original creature.

Evolution does not deal with abiogenesis which is the idea that life can come from non-life. Evolution requires something to be living to be alive for it to work. Many people raise the question of abiogenesis, which has much less evidence than evolution in order to question evolution. However, since evolution does not deal with abiogenesis, the questions are irrelevant to evolution per se.

Evolution does not deal with early cosmology, the formation of the universe, or the formation of the solar system and Earth. Evolution is a biological theory, not a physics or cosmological theory. However, some individuals will ask, "If you believe in evolution, where did the Earth come from?" Evolution has no connection to that answer. It would be like asking, "If you believe that Jesus was resurrected after three days, why did Buddha need to starve himself for forty-nine days to receive revelation?" The two fields are irrelevant to one another.

[See the discussion section for more of a debate on some semantics about evolution.]

Answer 2

Although the prevailing opinion regarding origins has the majority of scientists in support, many of these acknowledge that there are a number of questions which remain unanswered regarding evolutionary theory. Most would agree that these questions, while unresolved, do not 'oppose evolution' but are merely unresolved questions. Noted atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins in an interview about his book "The Greatest Show on Earth" referred to four of his favourite "unsolved mysteries" as follows:

1. The origin of life- "That is a complete mystery" he said.

2. The origin of sex.

3. The origin of consciousness.

4. The rise of morality.

(source: Boyle, A., The not-so- angry evolutionist, 14th October 2009)

The evolutionist G A Kerkut defined what is called the 'general theory of evolution' (GTE) as 'the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form.' Dawkins, as mentioned above, (as do many other evolutionists) regard this issue as one that remains to be solved. Some evolutionists try to suggest that the origin of life issue is not connected with evolution at all. However, this has not generally been so from Darwin himself onwards.

Evolutionist Gordy Slack states on this issue, "I think it is disingenuous to argue that the origin of life is irrelevant to evolution. It is no less relevant than the Big Bang is to physics or cosmology. Evolution should be able to explain, in theory at least, all the way back to the very first organism that could replicate itself...And to understand that organism fully, we would simply have to know what came before it. And right now we are nowhere close." (Slack,G What neo-creationists get right-an evolutionist shares lesson's he's learned from the intelligent design camp, The Scientist, 20 June 2008).

Other scientists highlight the following issues which remain to be addressed:

1. Information Theory (i.e. biological information): Living things contain masses of information encoded in their DNA, as well as the code-reading mechanism, together with the epigenetic code which controls gene expression. Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker (p115) stated There is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopedia Brittanica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over." In The Greatest Show on Earth (page 405) Dawkins states, "The difference between life and non-life is a matter not of substance but information. Living things contain prodigious quantities of information.

An intelligent message always requires an intelligent sender. This would appear to be simply impossible through random unguided naturalistic means. Computer simulations where evolutionists control the result through their intelligent input and produce a result supposedly showing evolution can happen are far removed from the real world due to the unrealistic scenarios favourable to their outcome.

2. Mutations: do not create new Genetic information necessary for microbes to man evolution to work. For a dinosaur to change into a bird would require an incredible amount of new DNA to be written into its genome. Mutations are shown universally in science to be harmful in terms of the information content. Where an organism benefits from a mutation there is still no increase in information but often a loss. Dawkins himself when asked could not give one single example of an information-adding mutation.

3. Natural Selection considered to be a mechanism of evolution can only select from what is already there (and there often is a high degree of adaptability in the genome of various species e.g. all the different Dog Breeds but still all dogs). Nothing new is ever created by natural selection, as shown by the modern science of genetics, developed since Darwin's time. As someone aptly stated -natural selection may explain survivalof the fittest, but it doesn't explain arrival of the fittest.

4.Genetic Entropy- although estimates vary (some higher some lower) human geneticists generally agree that the human genome is accumulating around 100 new mutations per person per generation. These mutations are too small to produce measurable effects and so are not 'weeded out' by natural selection. Geneticists also note the 100's of mendelian genetic disorders in mankind. These figures also suggest strongly that mankind should not exist at all if it as old as postulated.