Replies

. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
AiG has also advised against using this, in this section of Arguments we think creationists should NOT use, because a ‘theory’ in science means something with a reasonable amount of support, and gives evolution more credence than it deserves.

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.

This misses the point—these cloud chamber experiments are still observations in the present and are repeatable. A dinosaur turning into a bird 150 Ma (million years ago) is neither observable in real time, directly or indirectly, nor repeatable.

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2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.
Here is another argument we have previously advised creationists not to use, in this section of Arguments we think creationists should NOT use. Why should we argue this, since tautology is quite common in science, and natural selection is an important part of the Creation/Fall framework?—See Q&A: Natural selection.

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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.
This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution.

Look who’s talking about ‘ignoring important distinctions’! It’s evolutionary propagandists who generally conflate them (see this discussed in What is evolution?). Many define evolution as ‘change in gene frequency with time’ or ‘descent with modification’, or other such ‘microevolution’ words, and then go on to useDarwin’s finches and industrial melanism in the peppered moths (faked photos and all) as clinching proof of ‘evolution’ in the ‘macro’ sense and disproof of creationism! An example is the atheist Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the pretentiously named National Center for Science Education, the leading US organisation devoted entirely to pushing evolutionary indoctrination. She approvingly cited a teacher whose pupils said after her ‘definition’, ‘Of course species change with time! You mean that’s evolution?!’7

Having said that, AiG has advised people not to use the micro-/macro-evolution distinction in this section of Arguments we think creationists should NOT use, because the main issue is not the size of the change but the direction. All observed change involves sorting and loss of genetic information, while goo-to-you evolution requires an increase in information.

The links are missing!
Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!
Dr. Duane T. Gish

An updated and much-enlarged edition of Dr. Gish’s classic book Evolution: The Fossils Say No! The most compelling critique available anywhere of the supposedly key argument for evolution: the fossil record. Dr. Gish documents, from the writings of evolutionists, the complete absence of true evolutionary transitional forms.

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Visit our Q&A page on fossils!
Microevolution looks at changes within species over time—changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. 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.

But ‘evidence’ doesn’t speak for itself; it must be interpreted. As Rennie proclaims at the end, this evidence is interpreted within a materialistic framework. Then materialists turn around and proclaim evolution as a major evidence for materialism, which was responsible for it in the first place! Creationists interpret the same evidence but by a Biblical framework—see Creation: ‘Where’s the Proof?’. How creationists treat the fossil record is explained in the articles in the book and Q&A page (right).

DNA comparisons are just a subset of the homology argument, which again also makes sense in a Biblical framework. A common designer is another interpretation that makes sense of the same data. An architect commonly uses the same building material for different buildings, and a car maker commonly uses the same parts in different cars. So we shouldn’t be surprised if a Designer for life used the same biochemistry and structures in many different creatures. Conversely, if all living organisms were totally different, this might look like there were many designers instead of one. See Common structures = common ancestry?

Since DNA codes for structures and biochemical molecules, we should expect the most similar creatures to have the most similar DNA. Apes and humans are both mammals, with similar shapes, so have similar DNA. We should expect humans to have more DNA similarities with another mammal like a pig than with a reptile like a rattlesnake. And this is so. Humans are very different from yeast but they have some biochemistry in common, so we should expect human DNA to differ more from yeast DNA than from ape DNA.

So the general pattern of similarities need not be explained by common-ancestry (evolution). Furthermore, there are some puzzling anomalies for an evolutionary explanation—similarities between organisms that evolutionists don’t believe are closely related. For example, hemoglobin, the complex molecule that carries oxygen in blood and results in its red color, is found in vertebrates. But it is also found in some earthworms, starfish, crustaceans, molluscs and even in some bacteria. The a-hemoglobin of crocodiles has more in common with that of chickens (17.5 %) than that of vipers (5.6 %), their fellow reptiles.8 An antigen receptor protein has the same unusual single chain structure in camels and nurse sharks, but this cannot be explained by a common ancestor of sharks and camels.9 And there are many other examples of similarities that cannot be due to evolution.

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 Grant’s studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches).

And why should creationists deny such things? All are part of a created and fallen world, but have never been observed to add new genetic information. And we have shown that the sorts of changes which are observed are the wrong type to drive the evolutionary story. See The Evolution Train’s A-coming.

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