Is evolution even a good theory? Part 2: Predictions

This is part two of a two-part series examining evolution as a scientific theory. More specifically, I'm judging the soundness of the theory based on two criteria: 1) is it falsifiable and 2) does it make good predictions. In my last post, I discussed how evolution is so plastic as a theory, no evidence, no matter how contrary it is to our current understanding of evolution, could ever prove the theory is false. In this post, I'm going to examine how successful evolution has been at making predictions.

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To be of any practical use, a scientific theory should be able to make predictions. A prediction is basically to say that, if a theory is true, then we might expect a certain other thing to be true. I might say, for example, that hair is unique to mammals. If that is true, then I could predict that, if there is hair on any creature we ever discover, it will be a mammal. Predictions go hand in hand with falsifiability. If we ever discovered a cold-blooded, egg-laying, gill-breathing creature with hair, my theory would be proven false.

Let me give you an analogy that might demonstrate how useful predictions can be to a scientific theory. Suppose I wanted to mix paint to make new colors. I would need to know which colors to mix to make the color I want. If there were a “color theory” that predicted yellow and blue together make green, then that's useful information if I wanted to make green paint. If I mix yellow and blue paint and actually get green paint, then I might use that theory to help me with other color combinations. However, if the “color theory” said yellow and blue could make green, red, or any other color, then the theory isn't predictive and isn't useful to me at all.

Now suppose the color theory predicted yellow and blue would only make green, but when I mixed yellow and blue, I got red. In that case, I would know the theory doesn't make successful predictions. You could say it has been falsified. The inventor of the “color theory” might try to say that yellow and blue should make green but he can “explain” why it made red. OK, but the next time I mix them, I get brown. He then “explains” why I got brown. If he has an explanation every time I don't get blue, then there's really no way to falsify the theory. We're back to the problem that the theory isn't predictive but neither is it falsifiable. It's a useless theory.

Some people claim evolution is a strong theory that has made many successful predictions. Excuse me while I have a chortle. Following are a few of evolution's epic fails.

RADIOMETRIC DATING

Certain, naturally occurring substances are unstable and so will decay over time until it becomes a stable substance. Uranium, for example, decays over time and eventually becomes lead. The rate at which the decay occurs varies from substance to substance. Some decay at an extremely slow rate while others decay more rapidly (relatively speaking). By measuring the ratio of the parent/daughter elements (uranium/lead, for example), scientists can estimate how long the decay has been occurring. Many scientists consider radiometric dating to be the final word in determining the age of any sample and it is from radiometric dating that many people are convinced that the earth is very old. If radiometric dating actually dates things accurately, we could make a few predictions:

Prediction #1: Newly formed rocks should not have any of the daughter element present and should show an age of “zero.”

Results: Rocks formed at the Mt St Helen's eruption were dated using potassium/argon dating, the samples yielding ages up to 2.8 million years even though the known age of the rocks was 10 years old. FAIL.

Prediction #2: Carbon 14 is an unstable element found in all living things. As living things breath and eat, they accumulate C14. Once the thing dies, the C14 begins to decay and becomes C12. The key difference in this radiometric dating method and those discussed in the previous paragraph is that the decay rate of C14 is much quicker than many other types. It has a half-life of only 5,730 years. Due to its short half-life, we can predict that samples more than 100,000 years old should have no detectable C14 remaining in them.

Result: An 8 year long endeavor by creation scientists known as the RATE project, has found it is impossible to find any old samples without detectable levels of carbon. Even diamonds, the hardest natural substance and virtually impossible to contaminate, consistently yield trace C14 even though they are supposed to be a billion years old. FAIL.

PROGRESSION IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

According to secular dating, the rock layers represent the accumulation of sediment being laid down over time. The layers further down are older than the layers above them. Where fossils are found in the layers supposedly represents when those creatures lived. Creatures found in fossils in lower strata lived before the creatures found above them.

Prediction #3: If evolution were true, there should be a clear progression of simple to complex in the fossil record where the older creatures are more primitive than the younger creatures.

Result: Dinosaurs allegedly evolved into birds. However, I recently wrote about feathers identified as 78 myo yet are still described as being “nearly identical to those of modern birds.” Apparently, evolutionists don't see a problem with evidence showing modern birds lived contemporarily with their supposed ancestors.

The Laetoli footprints are a famous track of footprints left by three individuals as they trekked through volcanic ash. From Wiki, we read this about the prints:

The footprints themselves were an unlikely discovery because they closely resemble modern human footprints, despite being almost 4 million years old. It is noted that the toe pattern is much the same as the human foot, which is much different than the feet of chimpanzees and other non-bipedal beings. The footprint impression has been interpreted as the same as the modern human stride, with the heel striking first and then a weight transfer to the ball of the foot before pushing off the toes.

Interesting. Modern humans weren't supposed to have existed 4 million years ago but here are footprints that “closely resemble modern human” footprints found in ash they claim is 4 million years old. Since this evidence isn't compatible with evolutionists' claims about human evolution, they allege the prints belonged to Australopithecus afarensis, a supposed human ancestor. According to the Wiki article, other footprints were found in the same ash as the suspect prints.

Other prints show the presence of twenty different animal species besides the hominin A. afarensis, among them hyenas, wild cats,... baboons, wild boars, giraffes, gazelles, rhinos, several kinds of antelope, Hipparion, buffaloes, elephant relatives (of the extinct genus Deinotherium), hares and birds.

Think about this for a moment – they find baboon footprints and assign them to baboons; they find giraffe footprints and assign them to giraffes; they find rhino footprints and assign them to rhinos; they find modern human footprints and assign them to A. afarensis!! Isn't that hilarious?!

We have myriad examples of modern species living simultaneously with their supposed ancestors. There is no clear progression of fossils from ancestor to modern. FAIL.

TRANSITIONAL FORMS

Evolution is a history of descent with modification. A lobed fin becomes a leg which become wing. A fold in the skin becomes a scale which becomes a feather. The structures found on every creature of every species are simply adaptations of more primitive structures found on the creatures' ancestors.

Prediction #4: If evolution were true, we should expect to find volumes of fossil evidence showing creatures in transition from one species to another. In Darwin's own words, “innumerable transitional forms must have existed.... [J]ust 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.” We should not be able to turn over a shovel of dirt without finding another transitional form.

Result: Darwin himself was surprised that we didn't find, “every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links.” After more than a century and a half of looking, and the trillions of fossils that exist, evolutionists have – at most – a few dozen examples of transitional forms and even most of these are suspect. The “innumerable” amount we would expect to find are simply not there. FAIL.

THE APPENDIX

As we've already discussed, evolution is a history of descent with modification. Over time, some structures have supposedly lost their original function and have either become useless or have been adapted for some completely different function. Such structures are called, “vestigial.” The appendix is perhaps the most touted example of a vestigial structure.

Prediction #5: The appendix appears in many different species of mammals. If descent with modification has occurred, we should be able to trace the appendix along the so called, “tree of life” and find that all the creatures who have an appendix also share a common ancestor.

Result: The problem is, there is no predictable pattern among the mammals with appendixes. The appendix appears in some species of primates, rodents, and even marsupials but is absent from the intermediate groups linking these species. It's not at all what we would expect if evolution were true. FAIL.

TIKTAALIK

I bring this up because it is often cited by evolutionists as an example of a successful prediction made by their theory. It was even used by Bill Nye in his debate against Ken Ham. The most commonly accepted understanding of history is that life began in the sea and evolved onto land. If this has occurred, scientists would expect to find fossil evidence of creatures with structures in transition from sea-to-land.

Prediction #6: Based on their understanding of when the supposed transition of sea-to-land occurred, researchers began exploring an area of exposed, Devonian deposits in the Canadian Arctic in hopes of finding fossil evidence of a creature in transition from sea-to-land. They found Tiktaalik. According to one website detailing the prediction, “Not only was it exciting to find a new species, but it was made all the better by the fact that scientists had predicted the existence of a creature like this all along.”

Result: A few years after the discovery of Tiktaalik, a track of fossilized footprints belonging to a tetrapod were uncovered in a quarry in Poland. They were dated according to evolutionary dating methods to be 18 million years older than Tiktaalik. This would mean that fully evolved, ambulatory tetrapods were walking around millions of years before their supposed ancestor, Tiktaalik, ever lived (see failed prediction #3). FAIL.

In summary, I'll just say that I'm not sure of any successful prediction the theory of evolution has made. I only know that there are many, many failed predictions. Evolutionists will offer a lot of excuses in an effort to explain away these failed predictions but they are similar to the excuses I discussed about about failed predictions of mixing paint using a color theory. The difference is, knowing what colors to mix to make new colors is actually useful information. Evolution isn't useful to any field of science. There is no life-improving advancement made in the last 100 years whose invention hinged on an understanding of evolution. It's the trivial pursuit branch of biology. It's generous that we still even call it a “theory.”

Is evolution even a good theory? Part 1: Falsifiability

I intend to write a two-part series examining evolution as a scientific theory. More specifically, I'm going to be judging the soundness of the theory based on two criteria: 1) is it falsifiable and 2) does it make good predictions. In this post, I'm going to discuss falsifiability.

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A good scientific theory should falsifiable. That's not my rule but one agreed on by the scientific establishment. From RationalWiki, we read the following:

A central characteristic of science is that it must be falsifiable; this feature of a theory is attributed to Karl Popper, who mentioned it in a criticism of Darwinism. Scientific theories cannot be proven outright – they can only fail to be disproven, and this means pointing out what evidence could disprove the theory. If a theory cannot be disproven, such as with Russell's Teapot, it makes no difference whether it is true either way.

Wow, there's some bad grammar going on there. “Science” is the methodology we use to study something. Surely they don't mean “science” must be falsifiable. What they should say is that “scientific theories” must be falsifiable. Yikes. Anyway, in their own words, a good theory must be falsifiable. It must explain the evidence well, but there should also be some, hypothetical evidence, which, if discovered, would disprove it. It sounds weird but let me give you a simple example:

I theorize that all matter in the universe is made up of atoms. Now, I can't really examine everything in the universe so I could never truly prove my theory. However, if some object were found that wasn't made up of atoms, my theory would be disproven. So theories can't ever be proven, they can only be disproven. Get it?

One criticism of evolution is that it can't be disproven. The entire theory is plastic and is reshaped every day as new discoveries overturn previously held notions. No evidence, no matter how damning it may be to our understanding of evolution, is ever sufficient to disprove the theory. Scientists can be proven wrong about how something evolved or where something evolved or when something evolved but they will still never question that it evolved! How many times will they have to redraw their precious “evolutionary tree of life” before they realize there is no tree? //RKBentley sighs in frustration//

Creationists have often asked for concrete examples ways to test the theory. What are some specific, useful predictions that it makes and what are some things that, if we found them, would falsify the theory? I've asked this many times of many people and I usually get one of three responses:

• A flat dismissal of my question, sometimes accompanied with elephant hurling – something like, “Evolution is the most tested theory in science and is supported by mountains of evidence!”

• A turn of the tables in an effort to put the creationist on the defense – that is, “Oh yeah, well how would you falsify creation?”

• On very rare occasions, someone will suggest something that they claim – if found – would disprove evolution.

It's that last response that I'm most interested in yet it's the one that I almost never hear. For whatever reason, evolutionists are reluctant to enumerate concrete examples. I suspect it's because they fear that if they commit to some hypothetical example, maybe someday such a thing might someday be found. In all my years of asking, I've only heard a handful of serious ways that evolution might be falsified. These are the examples I will discuss in this post. Hold on to your seat – this is going to be a longer than usual post. Evolution would be falsified if we found....

A STATIC FOSSIL RECORD

The theory of evolution holds that life began as “simple” single-celled organisms which gradually evolved over billions of years to become the complex and diverse species we observe today. They are claiming here that, if we didn't observe a simple to complex progression in the fossil record, or some sort of progression from one species to another (like marine to land), then evolution would be shown false.

We've already found millions of fossils and evolutionists have built their “nested hierarchy” based on what they have found. In other words, they've already spelled out what they identify as a progression in the fossil record so how could the fossil record ever be used to falsify the theory? It's a sort of prediction after the fact. If a fossil is discovered, showing a species much lower in the fossil record than they previously believed it to exist, they just push the origin of that species further back in time and draw new lines on the evolutionary tree of life.

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Having said that, I think we do see stasis in the so called “fossil record.” I'm tempted to bring up the coelacanth but that example has been used by many other creationists before me. Let's look at crocodiles instead. According to Discover Magazine, “Of all living creatures, crocodiles perhaps bear the greatest resemblance to dinosaurs; in fact, they were contemporaries. The semiaquitic reptiles first appeared about 200 million years ago, or 30 million years after the dinos. Yet despite all the time that's passed since, there are only 24 species today, all of which look remarkably like their ancestors, and each other, except for some variation in skull shape.”

Wow, after an alleged 200 million years, modern crocodiles look like their fossilized ancestors. That sure sounds like stasis to me and that's just one example. It's rather ordinary to find the fossilized ancestors of living species in rocks believed to be millions of years old. That's why we coined the term “living fossils” to describe it! Jeez! Just do a Google search on the term “living fossil” and see how many results you can find.

TRUE CHIMERAS

In Greek mythology, the chimera was a creature with a goat's head, a lion's body, and a tail ending in a snake's head. In this context, a chimera is any creature that is a composite of other creatures. A centaur, for example, was a composite of a human and a horse.

Bizarre creatures like centaurs or mermaids would be difficult to fit into evolution's precious “nested hierarchy” but neither would falsify evolution. Evolution uses similarities between animals as evidence of their relatedness. Therefore, if a chimera were found, it would not be evidence against evolution but would actually be evidence of a previously unknown relationship between different groups.

Let's be honest, evolutionists know we're not ever going to find a centaur. But say we found a creature that shared features with... oh, I don't know... say a reptile and a bird. Oh, wait! We've found that already. Have you ever heard of Archaeopteryx? Per Wikipedia, Despite their small size, broad wings, and inferred ability to fly or glide, Archaeopteryx had more in common with other small Mesozoic dinosaurs than with modern birds. In particular, they shared the following features with the dromaeosaurids and troodontids: jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyper extensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers,... and various features of the skeleton.... These features make Archaeopteryx a clear candidate for a transitional fossil between non-avian dinosaurs and birds.

If we ever find a fish with hair, the headline the next day would not be, “Evolution proven wrong.” It would be, “New find shows fish more closely related to mammals than previously believed.”

IMPOSSIBLY COMPLEX ORGANS

Evolution is sometimes described as “descent with modification.” A wing is a modified leg – a leg is a modified fin – and so on and so on backward. Darwin understood that if some structure were ever discovered that could not have possibly been formed by this series of successive modifications, his theory would be disproven. Darwin described it this way (Source):

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.

Michael Behe is a biochemist who invented the term, “irreducible complexity.” According to Behe, an irreducibly complex system is “a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.” To illustrate this, he used the example of a mousetrap. A mousetrap has very few working parts. However, if any part is missing, the entire trap becomes useless. Since all of the parts have to be present before a mousetrap has any function, Behe believed the mousetrap was a good analogy of the type of structure Darwin meant.

In his research as a biochemist, Behe has examined the flagellum, a whip-like structure which single-celled creatures use to move themselves around. The flagellum is very complex and has several working parts. Since no single part of the flagellum would have any function at all, Behe claims it could not have evolved in gradual steps, since it would have no function until all of the parts were together. Behe claims it qualifies as the type of structure Darwin said would disprove his theory.

Proponents of evolution have attacked Behe's arguments from a variety of angles. From NewScientist, we read the following:

The best studied flagellum, of the E. coli bacterium, contains around 40 different kinds of proteins. Only 23 of these proteins, however, are common to all the other bacterial flagella studied so far. Either a “designer” created thousands of variants on the flagellum or, contrary to creationist claims, it is possible to make considerable changes to the machinery without mucking it up. What’s more, of these 23 proteins, it turns out that just two are unique to flagella. The others all closely resemble proteins that carry out other functions in the cell. This means that the vast majority of the components needed to make a flagellum might already have been present in bacteria before this structure appeared.

Now, this may be a fair criticism of Behe's claims. People on both sides of the debate could argue their points – which is how science is supposed to work. However, in their zeal to protect their theory, NewScientist overplays its hand and reveals the true attitude of the folks on their side. They will never accept that any structure is irreducibly complex. I direct your attention to the last few paragraphs of the article (bold added):

… [T]he fact that today’s biologists cannot provide a definitive account of how every single structure or organism evolved proves nothing about design versus evolution. Biology is still in its infancy, and even when our understanding of life and its history is far more complete, our ability to reconstruct what happened billions of years ago will still be limited. Think of a stone archway: hundreds of years after the event, how do you prove how it was built? It might not be possible to prove that the builders used wooden scaffolding to support the arch when it was built, but this does not mean they levitated the stone blocks into place. In such cases Orgel’s Second Rule should be kept in mind: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”

In other words, no structure, no matter how complex, no matter how many parts have to be present before the structure works, and no matter that none of the parts could serve in any other function that we can determine, will ever serve to satisfy this test of the theory. Even if we cannot imagine how some structure evolved, it has no bearing on whether it evolved because “evolution” found a way we can't think of. So, while Darwin and I think this would be a way to potentially falsify his theory, it's more of an exercise in futility because evolutionists can resort to “we just don't know how it happened.” They always have; they always will.

FOSSIL RABBITS IN THE PRECAMBRIAN

The Cambrian Period is a geological era believed by scientists to have occurred around 540 million years ago. Cambrian strata is remarkable for its abundance of diverse fossils whereas, strata below the Cambrian - aka “Precambrian” - are largely empty of fossils. The sudden appearance of fossils representing so many diverse animal phyla is so startling, many people have used the term “Cambrian Explosion” to describe it.

According to evolutionary theory, life began as “simple,” single-celled creatures which gradually became more complex over millions of years. Rock layers are also laid down gradually, over millions of years, and so the fossils found in each rock layer create a sort of snap shot of life on earth at the time the layer was laid down. The earliest and “simplest” life forms should be lower down in the geological column. The more recent and more evolved life formed should be higher up. Precambrian rocks, therefore, should only have fossils of the earliest and simplest creatures.

When asked what might falsify evolution, a British-Indian scientist, named J.B.S. Haldane, famously quipped, “rabbits in the Precambrian.” His point was that, since rabbits are believed to have evolved relatively recently, finding rabbit fossils with the earliest life forms would be problematic for the theory.

I agree that such a discovery would be extremely damaging to the theory of evolution. However, it's somewhat unlikely that such a discovery will be made. I believe the sequence of fossils better indicates where a creature lived/died rather than when. Think about it. If a deluge of water and mud suddenly buried everything, here's what I think we'd find: bottom dwelling marine animals would be buried first, then swimming animals, then amphibious animals, then reptiles and birds and mammals at the top. Well, that is sort of what we find. I say “sort of” because even terrestrial fossils are always found in layers with marine animals. I would not expect to find rabbits being buried with creatures at the bottom of the ocean.

Even though it's not probable that the Flood would bury rabbits with trilobites, it's not entirely impossible and so, once again, I think this is a fair test of the theory. Of course, it doesn't just apply to rabbits; any, grossly “out of order” fossils should be evidence against evolution. Richard Dawkins once said “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order.  Unfortunately, he doesn't mean it. We routinely find fossils in places we didn't think they'd be. Just do a google search on the term, “fossil rethink evolution” and you'll find plenty of examples. So even though there have been thousands of out-of-order fossils found over the past few decades, I haven't seen any headline that say any one of them have disproved evolution.

Saying out of order fossils would disprove evolution, when so many have already been found, shows this isn't a serious test but is mere posturing. RationalWiki even hedges its bet against the possibility that such a grossly could be found by disqualifying this as potential falsification immediately after they suggest it. In their own words:

“The simple truth is that a single strange fossil would probably not make much difference. In practice, the evidence in the fossil record which supports evolution is so overwhelming that a single fossil would be regarded as curious certainly, but compared to the mountain of evidence in favor of evolution it would probably be regarded as an anomaly while more data was awaited... However, the existence of entire groups of anomalous fossils would be a different thing — Haldane did say rabbits after all. Again, in practice an effort would initially be made to fit the new data into the existing framework — this is not cheating but simply the way science works. But still, in principle some quite major revisions to the theory may be needed to explain them. Such a situation would not immediately and conclusively prove a special creation over a naturalistic evolution.”

So... what are you saying, RW? That not even rabbits in the Precambrian would conclusively disprove evolution? Yeah, that's what I thought you were saying. Tsk, tsk.

If an evolutionist suggests a way his theory might be falsified, it will never be anything more than smoke and mirrors. It's a constant game of moving the goalposts because evolution is a worthless theory and not relevant to any other field of science. Nothing, no evidence we might find, no matter how contrary it is to everything they believe about evolution, will ever disprove evolution. The entire theory is propped up only by pseudo-science and the willingness of sinful, rebellious people to believe a lie.

Evolutionists think they have a monopoly on words

How does someone determine the meaning of a word? I guess one could consult a dictionary but I think we usually learn new words by hearing how they are used by others. When you think about it, dictionaries only describes how the word is commonly used. It's not a rule book. Dictionaries don't write languages, languages write dictionaries. After all, there is no transcendent, immutable meaning of any word that has been carved in stone somewhere. There is no “word czar” who has sole authority to judge what is the correct meaning of a word. The reality is that meaning of any word is transitory and it can mean whatever the majority of the populace thinks it means. Consider the word, “gay,” for example; it was during my lifetime that the word went from meaning, “happy” to meaning, “homosexual.” The dictionaries have changed their definitions to reflect this.

Of course, nearly every profession uses certain words that have specialized meanings. We usually call such words, “jargon.” The word “load” for example, will mean something different to an engineer than it does to a truck driver. There's nothing wrong with using jargon. However, an industry specific meaning of a word shouldn't change the way that same word is used by the public at large, right? Well, I don't think a reasonable person would expect it to but many evolutionists aren't reasonable. They want to foist their jargon upon us!

Here's a quote from the rabidly pro-evolution website, Talk Origins:

“Recently I read a statement from a creationist who claimed that scientists are being dishonest when they talk about evolution. This person believed that evolution was being misrepresented to the public. The real problem is that the public, and creationists, do not understand what evolution is all about. This person's definition of evolution was very different from the common scientific definition and as a consequence he was unable to understand what evolutionary biology really meant.

In the creation v. evolution debate, there's some controversy over the meaning of the word, “evolution.” There shouldn't be. When we're talking about evolution, we're talking about the idea that dinosaurs became birds or, more specifically, that apes became people. When a creationist says he doesn't believe in “evolution,” that is the point of contention – not the amount of change in the light/dark ratio of peppered moths.

Evolutionists, on the other hand, have their own definitions of the word, “evolution.” The most common definition is “any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.” Again, it's fine when one profession assigns a special meaning to an otherwise, ordinary word. However, when evolutionists engage in debate with the lay public, there's no rule that compels us lay-folk to use words the same way the evolutionists do.

In the above quote, I suspect the unnamed creationist understood very well what “evolution” means to evolutionary biologists. I also suspect that Mr. Moran knows very well what the creationist means by the word, “evolution.” Any “confusion” that occurs is only on the part of evolutionists who intentionally conflate the term to include both the minor, observed changes (like the peppered moths) and the unobserved evolution of molecules-to-man. In the creation v. evolution debate, the dispute is not over wolf-to-dog type evolution but over fish-to-frog, dino-to-bird, or ape-to-man. 

For some reason, evolutionists think they have the right to monopolize words. Just like Humpty Dumpty in, Through the Looking Glass, when they use a word, it means just what they choose it to mean. When a creationist says he doesn't believe in “evolution,” the evolutionist knows precisely what is being said. It's the evolutionist who muddies the waters by recklessly citing examples of “evolution” like the peppered moth and dino-to-bird as though they are the same thing.

There is no communication problem in the creation v. evolution debate. There are only evolutionists complaining that we don't use their jargon. In real fields of science, scientists are careful to use words with precise meanings but evolutionists aren't. They're happy to abuse the language in order to deceive a lay public.  Conflate, confuse, and obfuscate - that's the tactic of evolutionists.

I got a little chuckle at Mr. Moran's closing quote:

Scientists such as myself must share the blame for the lack of public understanding of science. We need to work harder to convey the correct information. Sometimes we don't succeed very well but that does not mean that we are dishonest. On the other hand, the general public, and creationists in particular, need to also work a little harder in order to understand science. Reading a textbook would help. ”

Really, Mr. Moran? Your solution to the imagined problem is that creationists read a book? I suggest you climb out of your ivory tower and begin learning how real people talk.

Why is atheism the default belief?

If you were to ask an atheist why he's an atheist, very seldom will you hear a positive answer. That is, you will hardly ever hear “evidence” for why atheism is the correct belief. Instead, the person will likely say he's an atheist because he hasn't been convinced that theism is the correct belief. In other words, he's withholding belief in God until he sees the evidence that God exists. Because of this, many atheists will describe atheism as the “default belief” of any thinking person.

At first hearing, this sounds reasonable. In some ways, I hold a similar view. I don't believe in Bigfoot or UFOs, for example, because I've yet to see any convincing proof that they exist. The anecdotal stories, the grainy video footage, and the dubious trace evidence (like footprints or crop circles) seem better explained as hoaxes or misidentification. I'm sure many atheists look at a belief in God in much the same way as I look at a belief in Bigfoot. But is this skeptical attitude necessarily the correct attitude?

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Pretend, for a moment, that you're walking through a forest and you happen upon a log cabin. It's crude and has only a dirt floor. It has no electricity, plumbing, or glass windows. It's just basically logs, notched and stacked, with openings cut out for the the door and windows. There's not a stick of furniture inside nor any other sign of anyone having lived in it recently. What questions might you ask yourself? I would think your first thoughts would be, I wonder who built this? Does someone live here? Where is he now?

I'm fairly certain no one would ask, “That's incredible! I wonder how these logs fell into the shape of a cabin?”

You see, logs organized into the shape of a cabin show design. Sections having been cut out to allow light and access show purpose. Design and purpose are the characteristics of created things and created things are the proof of a creator. The cabin obviously had a creator. Withholding judgment about the existence of a builder of the cabin is not the sign of a rational, thinking person. It's the stubborn refusal of a fool to acknowledge the obvious!

Life is all about design and purpose. Never mind something as advanced as the human brain – even a single DNA molecule is far more complicated than logs stacked in a square. How can anyone look at a stack of logs and know there was a builder yet see something a million times more incredible and stubbornly withhold judgment about its Creator?

In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” There are those words again, “design” and “purpose.” He further says, “The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn’t agree that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I give up.” Dawkins clearly sees design and purpose in the creation. Note, too, his use of the term, “this amount of complex design” which suggests it's more than a few examples of design.

What strikes me as most curious about his comment is how he says design cries out for an explanation. What is there to explain? Design and purpose immediately point to a Designer. I don't need any explanation about how some logs in the woods became formed in the shape of a cabin. The answer is immediately obvious. Somebody built the cabin; that's my default belief. The only thing that would need explaining is how so much design and purpose could come about without a Creator. But why would someone look for some other cause for design except that he rejects the most obvious cause a priori?

Dawkins has also said, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In other words, people might reject the concept of God but, without evolution, how could they explain the obvious design and purpose visible everywhere in the creation? That question would gnaw at the atheist's intellect making it impossible for him to be entirely secure in his disbelief. This seems a tacit admission that God is the best, first explanation behind design and purpose.

It seems to me that skepticism about God is not the most reasonable starting point. Indeed, it's not the default position at all. Skeptics aren't open-minded people willing to be persuaded if they are presented with compelling evidence. Instead, they have committed themselves in advance to the idea there is no God. They can see the evidence for God in the creation; they simply refuse to believe in the Creator!

A bad word analogy of evolution

 

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I found the “graph” below online a while back. Maybe it's not a graph; perhaps I should call it an illustration. I don't know. Normally, I'd link you to the original site but I can't find it now. Yes, there's a URL on the image but that gives me a "missing page" error.  I even did a Google search on the image but no luck. If anyone knows where the image came from, please leave a link in the comments. Thank you in advance.

Anyway, the author was trying to make the point that little changes can accumulate over time to create big changes. This is one of the lies that evolutionists tell when they say that the only difference between microevolution and macroevolution is time and scale. To make his point, the author showed how you could change the word AARDVARK to BASEBALL by changing only one letter at a time.

Now, as someone who often uses analogies, I can appreciate how difficult it is to create a really good analogy. I normally wouldn't nitpick an analogy if I can at least see the overarching point its author is trying to make. However, in this case, there are such fundamental flaws in the analogy that I believe it better illustrates some of the difficulties of evolution rather than how evolution could progress.

Before I get into the difficulties in the analogy (and, by extension, with evolution), let me offer a thumbnail of what the author is trying to demonstrate. Evolution supposedly happens via mutation and natural selection. A mutation will occur in the DNA of an organism; on rare occasions, the mutation will offer a benefit to the host; because of this advantage, the host may live longer (natural selection) and leave more offspring which will inherit the beneficial mutation; eventually, the descendants with the beneficial mutation will replace the entire population. In the analogy, the changes in the letters represent mutations in the DNA. The accumulation of these changes can turn the ancestral species into a different species in the same way changing one letter at a time can turn AARDVARK into BASEBALL.

Did I misrepresent anything? Isn't that how evolutionists believe populations evolve? OK, then on to the problems!!

EVERY GENERATION MUST BE SUCCESSFUL

The first problem is rather glaring. The steps in between AARDVARK and BASEBALL in this graph are just groups of letters that don't even make words. Going from actual words to meaningless letters represents a loss of information. If natural selection selects the most fit, why would it select AASDVARK over AARDVARK? It doesn't make any sense.

For evolution to happen, any mutation must make the host more fit than the population before it. For an arm to become a wing, for example, every slight modification of the limb had to be more beneficial than the generation before it. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a limb that is not quite an arm but not yet a wing would be selected over a fully functional arm.

Evolution is impossible if the transitional forms between the starting and ending species are any less fit than the generation before it. They'd be like the meaningless words between AARDVARK and BASEBALL.

EVOLUTION IS NOT A DIRECTED PROCESS

In the case of this graph, the author knew he was heading toward BASEBALL and selected only those letters that worked toward that goal. Natural selection doesn't know that it's supposed to do that. In the imaginary leg-to-wing series, natural selection would tend to select the mutation that creates a more fit leg over a mutation that makes the limb “more like a wing.” Further, it would not select the other features necessary for flight (like hollow bones, complex feathers, or perching legs) unless those features offer some survival benefit to the earth-bound creature. In short, natural selection will have the tendency only to make a terrestrial creature a more fit terrestrial creature. It will not select mutations that could eventually make an earth-bound creature a flying creature.

Consider mimicry in nature, for a moment, where one species will look like another. An example I've used before was one of Batesian mimicry, where a fly resembles a bee. Predators that eat flies, might avoid eating a bee out of fear of getting stung so looking like a bee offers a survival benefit to a fly. Using the stepwise method suggested by the graph, the problem becomes, how did such a striking similarity evolve gradually? Surely blind chance would not select a “more like a bee” mutation. It would only select for a “more fit fly.” Every single mutation that doesn't make the fly more fit will be selected against – even if the mutation might slightly resemble a bee.

TOO MUCH ROOM FOR ERROR

The final flaw I see in the analogy is the enormous room for error. As has already be discussed, for the analogy to be realistic, all the steps in between the starting and ending words should also be words. Here's an example with a 4-letter word, PLAY – FLAY – FLAG – FLOG – FROG. In this case, every step in between is a real word. However, in each place there are 26 possible replacements which means you are far more likely to get a meaningless word than a real word.

In the real word, mutations are far more likely to be neutral or harmful than they are to be beneficial. Yet it is the occasional, beneficial mutation, one that maybe happens only once in a while, that is the hope of all evolutionists. Beneficial, trait-adding mutations are astonishingly scare. I would say they don't happen at all but, just for the sake of argument, let's say they happen infrequently. How often can we agree that they might happen? Is it once every hundred mutations? Surely, it's not that often. I could say it's more like 1 in 10,000 or even 1 in 100,000. Actually, in a moment you'll see why higher numbers are worse for evolution but I'm going to be very, very generous and say it's 1 in 1,000. Now, let's look at some math.

If 1 in every 1,000 mutations is a beneficial, trait-adding mutation for the host, then for the host to inherit 2 beneficial mutations means there will have been 1,000,000 neutral or harmful mutations (1,000 x 1,000). To inherit only 3 means there will have been 1,000,000,000 neutral or harmful mutations in the genome (1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000). Can you see where this is going? The genome is deteriorating 1,000 times faster than it is improving. To inherit even a handful of successful mutations comes at the great expense of billions and billions of unsuccessful mutations. How many successful mutations would it take to turn a molecule into a man? How long could such a wasteful process continue before the entire genome becomes too corrupted to sustain life? Remember, this is assuming 1 beneficial mutation in every 1,000. If it were 1 in 10,000, then 2 successful mutations comes with the burden of 100,000,000 other mutations!

In 1995, A.S. Kondrashov published a paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology where he discussed contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations. Over time, the ratio of harmful mutations to good mutations should become unbearable and he says, “This paradox cannot be resolved by invoking beneficial mutations or environmental fluctuations.” In the title, he asks, “Why have we not died 100 times over?” It's a numbers game and evolution is losing!!

In conclusion, I understand this is supposed to be a simple analogy and not a scientific outline of the theory of evolution. However, the graph is a gross oversimplification. No, I take that back. It's worse than an oversimplification, it's outright deceit. It presents evolution as a simple, stepwise process where tiny, gradual changes over “millions and millions of years” would easily accomplish what rational people can see is impossible. They look only at the beginning and end, while ignoring all those pesky details in between. It reminds me of the rhyme children sometimes say: 1, 2, skip a few, 99, 100!!