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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense [THE FINAL DEBUNKING]
Scientific American ^ | 17 June 2002 | John Rennie

Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

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. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]

CONCLUSION
"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.

The Author(s):

John Rennie is editor in chief of Scientific American.


TOPICS: General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: crevolist
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To: PatrickHenry
Then came the post-modern age of switch-flip-spin-DEFORMITY-cancer---UNDER STATE/SATAN...Atheist secular materialists through evolution CHANGED-REMOVED the foundations(separation of state/religion)--TRUTH-GOD...made these absolutes relative and calling all the residuals---technology/science === evolution to substantiate/justify their efforts--claims...social engineering--PC--atheism...anti-God/Truth RELIGION--crusade!


1,961 posted on 06/27/2002 5:29:28 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: PatrickHenry
Creation science is to science as _______________ is to _______________.

Creation science is to science as rap music is to music.
Creation science is to science as Rosie O'Donut is to womanhood (tip 'o the hat to PH).
Creation science is to science as affirmative action is to action.
Creation science is to science as Congressional ethics is to ethics.
Creation science is to science as civil service is to service.
Creation science is to science as rubber cement is to cement.
Creation science is to science as "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" is to science.
Creation science is to science as French deodorant is to deodorant.
Creation science is to science as martial arts is to the arts.
Creation science is to science as almost pregnant is to pregnant.

Oh, wait, let's be PC: Creation science is to science as a fish is to a bicycle.

1,962 posted on 06/27/2002 5:33:13 PM PDT by balrog666
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To: balrog666
Well done. And now this thread moves into the 1960s, on its seemingly all-but-inevitable march to #2,000.
1,963 posted on 06/27/2002 5:39:55 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
My first day at school.
1,964 posted on 06/27/2002 5:48:00 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: jennyp
My First Communion was somewhere around here, IIRC. Lotta good my 12 years at St. Mary's of Redford did me! =:-D

1,965 posted on 06/27/2002 5:49:40 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: jennyp
My first day at school. [1964]

Ah, you went to school in the "under God" days. I started out with the old pledge. Now it's making a comeback. It's like saving your old fat neckties. What goes around ...

1,966 posted on 06/27/2002 6:03:18 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
My Dad & I were at a Tigers game. The announcement came over the loudspeaker to not take certain routes home after the game. Dad worked for the city & knew every street, so he drove us around to the area we were supposed to avoid. All throughout the black neighborhoods people were walking down the sidewalks, carrying TVs, small appliances, & other things they had just looted from the local stores. The '67 riots had begun.
1,967 posted on 06/27/2002 6:27:08 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: PatrickHenry
Now it's making a comeback.

Kinda like the Monty Python Parrot, merely stunned.

1,968 posted on 06/27/2002 6:28:13 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: jennyp
All throughout the black neighborhoods people were walking down the sidewalks, carrying TVs, small appliances, & other things they had just looted from the local stores. The '67 riots had begun.

Hey!! Wait a minute! Those are reparations! Get Sharpton and Jesse on the phone! Oops wait, those were people of ..... Well, neighborhood people, weren't they?

1,969 posted on 06/27/2002 6:37:42 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC

1969


1,970 posted on 06/27/2002 6:41:00 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: All
And now we enter the 1970s. The Viet Nam war was peaking, Nixon was President, Kent State was somewhere around this time. I can't recall who whom I was dating, but I'm sure she was flat-out georgous. (We're gonna make it to #2,000.)
1,971 posted on 06/27/2002 6:42:06 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
1972
1,972 posted on 06/27/2002 6:44:14 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: PatrickHenry
georgous

Pretty too.

1,973 posted on 06/27/2002 6:45:38 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: All
Timeline of the Twentieth Century: 1970-1979 .
1,974 posted on 06/27/2002 6:53:19 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
Bought my first electric shaver and had to start using it too!
1,975 posted on 06/27/2002 7:02:36 PM PDT by scripter
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To: scripter
First time I fell in love. Sigh. Think I'll stop now!
1,976 posted on 06/27/2002 7:05:56 PM PDT by scripter
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To: All
More timelines:

Hominid Species Timeline .
human evolution timeline .
The Cosmic Clock.

1,977 posted on 06/27/2002 7:14:54 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
Stayin' alive, stayin' alive; ah- ah- ah- ah- stayin' aLIIII, IIVE....

(I'm goin' nowhere, somebody help me..)

1,978 posted on 06/27/2002 7:41:31 PM PDT by inquest
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To: inquest
Stayin' alive, stayin' alive; ah- ah- ah- ah- stayin' aLIIII, IIVE.... (I'm goin' nowhere, somebody help me..)

You seem perfectly suited this evening for a long meaningful chat with f.christian. I'm leaving the thread in your capable hands while I bail out for the evening. Tomorrow, we hit #2,000. Maybe even tonight!

1,979 posted on 06/27/2002 7:50:31 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: gore3000
Somehow the man in some sort of Alice in Wonderland fashion is able to hold two mutually contradictory beliefs at the same time. Nevertheless the man agrees it is a program.

Gore, it really makes you look foolish when your “irrefutable” evidence contradicts your hypothesis. No one here, with the possible exception of the creationist peanut gallery, is buying your phony argument. You would have more credibility if you referenced those Jack Chick comics. The authors do NOT hold mutually contradictory beliefs. You still falsely assume the genetic program is not adaptable to change. You were given several examples demonstrating this to not be the case and you apparently have chosen to ignore them (or you just don’t understand) . Development is a complex, highly regulated process, but NOWHERE in the passage does the author claim that the process cannot handle a deviation. Adaptability is a cornerstone in biology. The authors are well aware that the program can handle changes. Drosophila has been used as a genetic model for development for decades and all kinds of mutations have been introduced (some of which by “random” means). The PROGRAM is able to adapt. If anything, this passage is “irrefutable” evidence in favor of evolution! They note the similarity between flies, worms and humans during development. This is clearly irrefutable evidence that they all share a common ancestor.

1,980 posted on 06/27/2002 9:27:15 PM PDT by RightWingNilla
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