Its interesting to me that the parts of Darwin's theory people fight the most over, an old earth, descent of species from common ancestors and genetic change leading to altered or new species, are not the parts of the theory that has led to the pernicious ideas you mentioned, but rather it's the theory that random mutation produces variations in a species that compete in the "fight for the survival of the fittest" is the agent of change in life on earth. And its that aspect for which there is such a dearth of evidence.
An old paleontologist friend of mine once told me we (scientists) know change has occurred (the "fact" of evolution, if you define evolution as change in life on earth), we just don't know what the change agent is.
Its interesting to me that the parts of Darwin's theory people fight the most over, an old earth, descent of species from common ancestors and genetic change leading to altered or new species, are not the parts of the theory that has led to the pernicious ideas you mentioned, but rather it's the theory that random mutation produces variations in a species that compete in the "fight for the survival of the fittest" is the agent of change in life on earth. And its that aspect for which there is such a dearth of evidence.
There is no evidence at all for the concept of mutation creating more complex, "successful" creatures. Even before the "natural selection" part kicks in, something had to be mutated into existence in a creature for it to be able to survive and reproduce in a manner far more effective than if that mutation never took place.
Sadly, the evidence for these sort of mutations in animals is zero. No one has ever observed even one. And yet if these mutations don't exist, than neither does a species creating evolution. At best, you get what we already know: variation on a theme.
For instance, we all know bats are mamals with incredibly specialized and unique characteristics well beyond that of any other type of mamal. So assuming some sort of common ancestor for the bat, how did a nice little ground loving furball of a mamal all of sudden begin producing wings, sonar, a love of caves and dark places, etc., when it was obviously doing a fantastic job of surviving without any of that stuff??? Evolution can provide some really fantastic "just-so" stories in an attempt to explain the origin of bats, but that's all it will ever be able to do.
The truth is, biologists know that DNA plays just a tiny part in the process of reproduction. The egg itself plays a MAJOR role in that process, and has all sorts of built-in limitations that keep reproduction within very strict bounds. You can't just feed an egg any old DNA strand you want, as eggs only use particular parts of the code for very particular parts of cell creation. If the code it's looking for isn't there, or is corrputed, then the egg either fixes the code (but no one knows exactly how) or it just produces something that will not be viable--it will be DOA.
There is a lot about the role the egg plays in reproduction that is completely mysterious. The egg plays the computer to the DNA's data. But exactly how that computer knows what to look for in that data stream, and what to do about it, is largely unknown.
But one thing that is apparent: there are very particular boundaries--at least in animals--that you cannot cross. A creature can be varied to a certain extent, and then no further.
But don't let the dogmatic neo-Darwinian evolutionists find out about this: it would spoil their whole carefully crafted metaphysical argument. Nothing is impossible where evolution is concerned--except, of course, anything that it can't explain...
An old paleontologist friend of mine once told me we (scientists) know change has occurred (the "fact" of evolution, if you define evolution as change in life on earth), we just don't know what the change agent is.
I have a friend who is a brilliant geologist. I asked him how do geologists know, exactly, how old rocks are. He gave a simple answer: faith.