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Natural selection and other mechanisms—such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization—can drive profound changes in populations over time.

Again, do these profound changes increase information? Populations are seen losing information, and adapting within the constraints of the information they already have; goo-to-you evolution requires something quite different, the progressive addition of massive amounts of genetic information that is novel to not only that population, but to the biosphere.

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 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows.

What the fossil record shows in reality, even granted the evolutionary ‘dating’ methods, is that this clear-cut progression exists only in the minds of evolutionary popularists. Marvin Lubenow, in his book Bones of Contention (right), shows that the various alleged ‘ape-men’ do not form a smooth sequence in evolutionary ‘ages’, but overlap considerably. For example, the time-span of Homo sapiens fossils contains the time-span of the fossils of Homo erectus, supposedly our ancestor. Also, when the various fossils are analysed in depth, they turn out not to be transitional or even mosaic. The morphology overlaps too—the TJ paper by creationist John Woodmorappe, titled The non-transitions in ‘human evolution’—on evolutionists’ terms concludes from the analysis of a number of characteristics that Homo ergaster, H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis as well as H. heidelbergensis, were most likely ‘racial’ variants of modern man, while H. habilis and another specimen called H. rudolfensis were just types of australopithecines. In fact, H. habilis is now regarded as an invalid name, probably caused by assigning fragments of australopithecines and H. erectus fossils into this ‘taxonomic wastebin’.

But one should not—and does not—find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago).

Of course I don’t believe the millions of years in the first place (see The Young Earth, right, for some reasons), but I know enough to know that Rennie has made a blooper even under his own perspective. Evolutionists assign the date of 65 Ma to the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary) not the Jurassic period, which is alleged to have been 208–144 Ma. [After this rebuttal was first posted, the web version of the Scientific American article corrected their error]

Actually, evolutionists could easily accommodate such ‘out of place fossils’, as they have with living specimens of the Coelacanth fish and Wollemi Pine. These are just as sensational from an evolutionary paleontologist’s perspective as finding a living dinosaur. Since the materialistic paradigm (interpretive framework) is all important, evolutionists would be able to explain an ‘old’ human fossil by ‘reworking’ (displacing from the initial burial depth), or may even reassign such bones to another creature, since after all ‘we know’ that humans can’t be that deep in the fossil record! For example, the famous fossil footprints at Laetoli, Africa, of an upright walking biped—the University of Chicago’s Dr Russell Tuttle has shown that these are the same sorts of prints as made by habitually barefoot humans. But since they are dated at millions of years prior to when evolutionists believe modern humans arrived, they are regarded as australopithecine prints, by definition, even though australopithecine foot bones are substantially different from human ones. And then in an amazing twist, the same prints are held up as evidence that australopithecines walked upright like humans—regardless of the fact that other aspects of their anatomy indicate otherwise. Another good example of how a researcher’s presuppositions can lead to all sorts of special pleading is the explaining away of clear evidence for a fossil belemnite in Fossil flip-flop.

The fossil order can be explained in a creationist framework, which avoids some of the contradictions of the evolutionary view. See Where are all the human fossils? and The Fossil Record: Becoming More Random All the Time (more technical).

Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

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.

This would not ‘disprove evolution’, since big-picture Evolution is really just a grab-bag of ideas about naturalistic (God-less) origins. Evolutionists already believe in spontaneous generation, but now call it chemical evolution. They would actually be delighted if any or multiple examples of spontaneous generation were documented, because it would vindicate their belief that life came into being without an intelligent Creator. It would also solve their problem with the DNA in microbes not showing a pattern consistent with common ancestry—in this regard multiple spontaneous origins have already been proposed, without any suggestion that this would ‘disprove evolution’.10

Incidentally, it’s important to note that a non-complex life form is an impossibility, since it needs to have the ability to reproduce. Even the simplest known true self-reproducing organism, a Mycoplasma, has 482 genes with 580,000 ‘letters’ (base pairs). But even this appears not to be enough to sustain itself without parasitizing an even more complex organism. Most likely, the parasitism resulted from loss of some of the genetic information required to make some essential nutrients (see Genome decay in the Mycoplasmas). Therefore a hypothetical first cell that could sustain itself would have to be even more complex.

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.

The Bible claims to be a revelation by the Creator of life and the Universe, who certainly has ‘claimed credit for creating life on Earth’, yet Rennie does not see this as casting doubt on evolution. And there is excellent evidence that the Bible’s claims are true (see Q&A: Bible). But Rennie has apparently already made up his mind that this evidence doesn’t exist—this would presumably upset his materialistic faith.

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.

This is simply an attempt to immunize evolution from the same criticism that’s advanced at creationists. As often pointed out, it’s hard to come up with a definition of ‘science’ that includes evolution and excludes creation unless it’s blatantly self-serving. Sometimes these definitions are self-contradictory, e.g. some, including Gould, have claimed that Creation is not scientific because it’s not testable, but then they go on to explain how it has allegedly been tested and shown to be wrong.