I
came across an article the other day that listed THE
TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION AT ALL. It's
written by Tyler Francke, who also wrote 10
THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS NO YOUNG-EARTH CREATIONIST CAN ANSWER (all
10 of which I answered here).
It seems Francke has a penchant for Top 10 lists with presumptuous
titles. Anyway, I thought I'd write a reply and, so, went through my
usual, internal struggle – should I write a series or not? Once
again, I chose to write a series. Sigh. I intend to cover 2 points
per post so the entire series shouldn't be more than 5 posts long.
It's
a common fallacy suggested by evolutionists that creationists don't
believe evolution because they don't understand evolution. It's a
classic No
True Scotsman argument where the critic is basically saying,
“Everyone who understands evolution believes it.” No matter how
well a creationist might understand the theory, unless he believes
it, the critic will continue to accuse him of not understanding it.
Worse yet, critics often accuse creationists of lying. To ardent
evolutionists, it's impossible to imagine how anyone can understand
evolution and still sincerely disagree with it.
Now,
I'll admit there might be some things about evolution that some
creationists misunderstand. Let's face it – no one is an expert in
everything and most people aren't evolutionary biologists. However,
I would say that the average, lay creationist understands evolution
about as well as the average evolutionist. It's a fact that most
creationists went to public schools and learned about evolution while
sitting in the same classrooms as evolutionists. What I find amusing
is that some evolutionists are very forgiving of people who
misunderstand the theory as long as those people believe the theory.
I can sort of understand why a person might disagree with something
he doesn't understand but is it any better for a person to be
zealously committed to a theory he doesn't understand?
Consider
this too, whether or not a person understands something is not
evidence for or against that thing. Some subjects are complicated
and even if there are things I don't understand about it, doesn't
mean I'm wrong about the things I do understand. I may not be able
to write a scientific paper on gravity but I know what happens if I
drop an egg. If someone else wrote a scientific paper saying that
gravity is an illusion and he included several, complicated,
mathematical formulas to prove his point, it wouldn't matter if I
don't understand the math. I still know what happens when I drop an
egg. The truth of any theory doesn't rise or fall on any person's
ability to understand it. Reality doesn't care what we think about
it.
In
short, the 10 points listed here are primarily straw men arguments of
creationists' positions. Rather than pointing out where any
creationist may be wrong, I think they are more successful in
revealing the flawed – even deceptive – arguments frequently used
by evolutionists who try to shame or embarrass creationists into
being silent. The article should have been titled, 10 Stupid
Arguments Evolutionists Use Against Creationists.
Are
we ready? Then let's get started!
1.
You think “it hasn’t been observed” is a good argument against
it.
If
you think about it, this point is rather hilarious. It's basically
saying that, just because we've never observed something, that's not
a good reason to believe it doesn't exist. //RKBentley scratches
his head// Isn't it the critics who insist we should always be
skeptical? Aren't they the ones who “withhold judgment” until
they see the evidence? Well, since we've never seen a dinosaur turn
into a bird, or a fish turn into a frog, or an ape turn into a man,
some people might question if it ever really happens.
Of
course, just because I've never seen something happen doesn't mean it
didn't happen, I'll admit. Things can happen when nobody is there to
see. But if no one anywhere has seen a certain thing, to suspect it
might not have happened is normal skepticism. To say, “it hasn't
been observed” is a fair point.
Francke,
on the other hand, wants to give the impression that science isn't
about making observations. From the article he said, “Making
viable conclusions based on inferences from the available evidence is
not at all unscientific, and it is this reasoning that has compelled
us toward the theory of evolution.... This,
of course, is the defining characteristic of science: Not that is
observable and repeatable, but that it is testable and falsifiable.”
[Bold
removed from original]
I
would ask Francke how does one infer anything from the evidence
unless he can observe it? How can we test and falsify theories
except by repeatable experimentation? What Francke is doing –
deliberately, I believe – is conflating theory
with evidence. Evolutionists do this all the time. What we
observe is evidence – a fossil, a rock, an animal, or
whatever. We can only examine evidence by observation. We then
invent theories that try to explain the evidence. In the
quote above, the “viable conclusions”
we can infer is what other people call the theory of evolution
and the “available evidence”
are the things we observe (like fossils, rock strata, ratios of
radioactive elements, etc).
Evolutionists
understand the difference between making observations and drawing
conclusions even though they usually refuse to admit it. Did you
catch when Franke said, “If
the idea (that “scientific evidence must be both observable and
repeatable”) were carried to its logical conclusion, it would
cripple not only the study of evolution, but every line of historical
inquiry.” He
has unwittingly conceded the thing that other evolutionists have
stubbornly denied – namely that there really is a distinction
between the science done in the lab and what some creationists call,
“historical science.”
In
the famous Ham v. Nye debate, Bill Nye said the following:
So
here tonight we are going to have two stories, and we can compare Mr.
Ham's story to the story from the outside, what I call mainstream
science. The question here tonight is, does Ken Ham's creation model
hold up? Is it viable? So let me ask you, what would you be doing if
you weren't here tonight? You'd be home watching CSI TV show,
CSI-Petersburg. I think that's coming. And on CSI, there is no
distinction made between historical science and observational
science. These are constructs unique to Mr. Ham. We don't normally
have these anywhere in the world except here.
The
fact that there is a qualitative difference between studying events
from the past and studying things in the present should be self
evident. Indeed, it is self evident and evolutionists simply avoid
acknowledging it because it clearly undermines their arguments.
It's perfectly valid to point out that evolution is a conclusion that
is being made about past events and not a thing we can observe.
Let's be very clear - we can't observe theories. Ever!
Related
posts:
2.
You think we’ve never found a transitional fossil.
I
wouldn't say there are no
transitional fossils. Instead, I would say there are a
scarcity of unequivocal examples compared to the number that must
have existed if evolution were true. One sub-point in the
over-arching theory of evolution, for example, is that dinosaurs
evolved to become birds. According to this point, the forelimbs of
dinosaurs were modified over many generations to become wings. If
this were true, there would have to have been an enormous number of
generations between “fully arm” and “fully wing.” Indeed,
there would have been more of the part-are/part-wing forms than
either arm or wing. Charles Darwin commented about this in his
book. He described the hypothesized transitional forms as
“infinitely numerous connecting links”
and
said the following.
“But
just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an
enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which
have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is
not every geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links?”
Darwin
understood that, if his theory were true, transitional forms should
fill every stratum of rock. We shouldn't be able to turn over a
shovel of dirt without finding one. Darwin even remarked that the
absence of transitional fossils was, perhaps, “the
most obvious and gravest objection” to his theory.
Darwin
blamed the glaring lack of transitional fossils on “the
extreme imperfection of the geological record.” In
other words, these creatures lived, but since fossilization is allegedly such a
rare event, there just weren't any fossils made of them. How
convenient. His “just so” story, though, doesn't hold any water
when you think about what we do find in the fossil record. There are
literally trillions of fossils in the world and we've found hundreds
– maybe thousands – of dinosaurs and birds. There are plenty of
arms and plenty of wings. There are virtually none of the imagined
in-between forms.
Several
years back, National Geographic published an articled titled, New
Fossil: Link Between Fish and Land Animals? The whole point of
the article is how scientists may have finally found a
transitional sea-to-land fossil. Let me direct you to the following passage
from that article:
The
late Devonian period has is a rich fossil history of lobed fishes....
After the Devonian the fossil record disappears, at least for a
while—20-30 million years. Only three informative fossils dating
back to this time have been found. When the fossil record resumes
roughly 25 million years later, there was already a tremendous
variety of tetrapod landforms. Ancestors of modern mammals,
amphibians, reptiles, and birds had already evolved and were
diverging along distinct branches.
That
paragraph is worth rereading. First, we have “rich
fossil history”
of fish. Next we have “a
tremendous variety of tetrapod landforms.”
And we have
virtually no fossils in between!
Let that sink in!
But,
yes. Evolutionists have a few dozen, maybe even a couple of hundred
fossils they've dubbed as transitional. Big whoop. They're hardly
compelling. Sure, I could arrange some species in a way to make them
appear to be a progression. A flying squirrel could be resemble a
hypothetical transition between squirrels and bats but of course it
isn't. Likewise, there are a handful of species that could resemble
a cross between two different kinds of creatures. But that isn't
enough to fill the enormous gaps between the groups.
Evolutionists
need to come to grips with this weakness in their theory. If
evolution were true, transitional forms should be the rule – not
the exception. There is no “clear
progression”
of fish-to-frog, or dino-to-bird, or ape-to-man in the fossil record!
Related
posts:
