One point I use to make to students at the beginning of the very first day of class is that: The Theory of Evolution is about how evolution has taken place. The Theory of Evolution is not about if evolution has taken place. That evolution has taken place, is taking place, and will take place in the future can and should be taken as a fact. To see it clearly just look at what bred of dog you own - that’s the result of Sexual Selection.
What evolved into the dog in the first place? If evolution is an ongoing process, which everyone says it is, then why do we not hear about the critter that’s currently walking around that seems to be the next evolutionary stage, or is in the process of developing into the next evolutionary stage, of some other critter that is currently walking around?
All this got me to start asking questions of friends, particularly liberal friends for whom evolution was a dogma of their religion. I would ask, “Okay, so the monkey evolves into an ape that evolves into man; so, what evolved into the monkey? And, what evolved into what evolved into the monkey?” I kept thinking about how I had seen the chart about the evolution of ape into man, but I could not recall ever having seen a chart of what evolved into the monkey. And I most certainly did not recall seeing any chart that traced man’s specific evolution back to a one-celled amoeba or any such thing. Yes, there were charts that had a fish with an arrow pointing to an amphibian and an arrow going from the amphibian to the reptile and one from the reptile to the mammal on one side and the bird on the other, but these were very, very general. I wanted specifics.
Not one of them could answer my questions. Not one. They didn’t even attempt to answer my questions. Which made me realize that for most people, the belief in evolution is more about faith than it is about knowledge. They believe it because someone they trusted taught them about it and they have never ever seriously questioned that belief.
I started looking for such a comprehensive evolutionary chart on the internet. I’m not saying there isn’t one out there, but I couldn’t find it. I did not spend hours and hours looking, but it wasn’t just one short google search either. It seemed to me that if such a chart existed, I should be able to find it pretty quickly as I would imagine it would be on just about every website that pushed evolutionary theory. Couldn’t find one.
So for me, the “common sense” notion of evolution which I had developed by looking at this chart of ape to man, started to not make a whole lot of sense. I even tried to construct an evolutionary chart of my own, but I never could come up with even the first step backwards…what animal evolved into the monkey? Was it a dog? A cat? A badger? A raccoon? What was it?
Then I started having all these other questions…what animal evolved into a dog? Into a cat? Into an octopus? Into a cow? Into a pig? And this is where I started asking about the fossil records for evolution. Turns out the fossil records in regard to evolution, as best I can determine in my research (again with my limited knowledge of paleontology and such), have very large holes in them.
I also started wondering, “Why have I not heard of species currently in existence that are in various stages of transition to another species?” I mean, if evolution is an ongoing process, which everyone says it is, then why do we not hear about the critter that’s currently walking around that seems to be the next evolutionary stage, or is in the process of developing into the next evolutionary stage, of some other critter that is currently walking around?
Again, my friends for whom evolution is a religion could not provide any answers. They did not even attempt to answer any of my questions. As they say, the silence was deafening. So, all of this led to my “common sense” belief that evolution actually is not true.
Borrowed from
here.