What are the main arguments against evolution?

[PaulAndrew83]

So as long as God is acknowledged as creating the first lifeform as a miracle, you are okay with the rest of life having evolved from that first created lifeform in the standard scientific manner?

Firstly I had nothing against this idea way back when. I couldn’t have cared less either way. This is probably why I ended up willing to consider the arguments against evolution. It was not emotionally important to me that evolution explains things.

Before I go on I must state that this “standard scientific manner” is in no way close to being definitive. There is also the problem that the amount of time according to modern science that we have is in no way close to what is required to get from that first cell to us. The problem is that regardless of the idea of “small gradual change” there are still a significant number of jumps that need to be explained.

Here is an example of a few of them.

The Jump from single cell to multi cell.
Every time an extra pair of chromosomes are added.
The jump from asexual reproduction to male and female.

I could go on and on.

That is why there are theistic evolutionists. Every time evolution cannot explain a particular jump - they go well God must have done this particular thing as well. These are the jumps that are actual jumps and example of things that there can be no gradual change to.

Paul

 

[Just_Lurking]

That is why there are theistic evolutionists. Every time evolution cannot explain a particular jump - they go well God must have done this particular thing as well. These are the jumps that are actual jumps and example of things that there can be no gradual change to.

See here for an example of normal single-headed parents having a two-headed daughter. Is this the kind of “jump” that you consider to be beyond evolutionary explanation?

 

[PaulAndrew83]

See here for an example of normal single-headed parents having a two-headed daughter. Is this the kind of “jump” that you consider to be beyond evolutionary explanation?

That isn’t an evolutionary change. It isn’t caused by any kind of mutation. Its a kind of physical error analagous to somebody losing their legs.

An evolutionary change on the other hand would be a permanent change that would be passed on to offspring.

Paul

 

[Just_Lurking]

That isn’t an evolutionary change. It isn’t caused by any kind of mutation. Its a kind of physical error analagous to somebody losing their legs.

An evolutionary change on the other hand would be a permanent change that would be passed on to offspring.

Thanks for the explanation!

 

[Dave59]

It may be that we share similarities in DNA and in other physical features with other animals because we were all created by the same God and therefore there is a consistency in his creation.

From
1996 Developmental Biology paper by Gilbert, Opitz, & Raff
groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96.980602230744.671C-100000%40umbc8.umbc.edu
The same Gilbert et al. observations could also be interpreted as
an intelligent designer (or Intelligent Designer) using the same
(or similar) sequences in the designing of organisms: “Hmmmm.
The Pax-6 gene has, as I expected, worked nicely in this
insect. You know what, it’ll work well in vertebrates, too.
Some vertebrates, with vertebrate eyes using the Pax-6 gene,
coming right up.” Inferring from similar sequences a common
author is not farfetched; for example, a teacher may charge a
student with plagiarism on the basis of letter sequences in his
(purchased) term paper that resemble letter sequences in a
previous student’s paper.

If you look at God as an artist, all the works by the same artist may have similar techniques and features.

You might like Fazale Rana’s The Cell’s Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator’s Artistry (2008), which makes that same point. On Amazon:
amazon.com/Cells-Design-Chemistry-Creators-Artistry/dp/0801068274/

Rana’s chapters open with apt parallels between humans’ art and features of biology. The book does a detailed job of depicting the grand nature of select elements in biology, suggestive of being the workproduct of a master Creator. Rana thereby makes a positive case for intelligent design of biology, which is important because negative arguments against Darwinian natural selection, while having a role to play, are by themselves insufficient to overturn naturalism. A positive case for intelligent design must be advanced for design to have any chance of supplanting naturalism. Rana advances an intriguing ‘watchmaker prediction,’ which says that we can expect that biological machinery precedes and anticipates humans’ technology. DNA’s information-bearing characteristics received discussion in the most fascinating chapter, “The Artist’s Handwriting.” The philosophical rigor of the concluding chapter needs much improvement.

 

[stuartsfeather]

Hi all,

What are the biggest proofs against evolution?

I say this because I am reading more and more Traditional Catholic arguments against evolution, some of which are bit above my level of intelligence at the moment and I wanted to know in a nutshell what are main arguments against evolution in simple terms?

If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes? Either you are a christian or you are not, just take it and run with it, you are the one at the finish line all by your self.

Stuartsfeather

 

[foxscape]

Hey there I have a bit of background on this so I can answer it but I’ll try to keep it simple. There are three basic categories of anti-evolutionist thought that run through Christianity generally Young Earth arguments, Old earth arguments and intelligent design arguments

Young Earth arguments are generally derived from the Biblical text of genesis and assume an earth that is about 6000 years old. Generally they accept all of the biblical records including the creation account, Noah’s flood account and all the genealogies as they are set out as completely factual. As such evolution is totally incompatible with their views

Old Earth Arguments generally try to concord the biblical account with the scientific record by assuming some level of non-literal interpretation, generally you will hear arguments from this group to the effect that the days of genesis might not be days as we understand them, but rather days for god (perhaps millions of years). For this group it is still important that God periodically enter the natural order for acts of special creation (creating animals or humans out of nothing). There can be some acknowledgment of evolution from this group, but never in the case of humans who are always specially created.

Intelligent design arguments see evolution as an incomplete theory, generally they will accept evolution from a certain point in history, but argue that certain things that cannot currently be explained by evolutionary science must have been the work of an intelligent designer. A good example of this is their arguments surrounding bacterial flagella. These structures must exist for bacteria to survive and thus it is difficult to conceive of how they might have evolved, presently there is little scientific evidence or even hypotheses surrounding the evolution of bacterial flagella thus intelligent design proponents suggest that it must have been the work of an exterior intelligent designer.

For more information I recommend two books by Dr. Denis Lamoureux

I love Jesus and I Accept Evolution and Evolutionary Creation

Hope that helps,
JRB

 

[reggieM]

Here are some arguments that I’ve picked up from traditional Catholic sources and other places and some are just my own criticisms of evolution.

1. “Evolution” is an ambiguous concept. “Evolutionary theory” is ambiguous also. “Theistic evolution” is also not clear at all. All of the ambiguity and sometimes outright contradictions indictate that there is something very wrong with “evolution”.
2. Evolutionists contradict each other on some fundamental aspects of “evolutionary theory”
3. As in #2 above, evolution is claimed to happen very slowly or very quickly or at an undetermined rate of speed.
4. As in #3 – evolutionary theorists do not offer predictions on how current day animals will evolve and how long such evolutions will take.
5. The fossil record shows fully formed creatures and not creatures with bizarre mutations that didn’t quite make it.
6. There is a major difference between what is claimed for “fossil evolution” and “DNA evolution”. In fact, the difference is so profound that the so-called evolutionary tree, based on the simplistic “fossils look similiar” approach has been been proven wrong with the “DNA is similar” approach.
7. The invention of ideas like convergent evolution, genetic drift and self-organization as attempts to solve the many problems of “ordinary evolutionary” ideas is evidence of the many problems that the theory has.
8. Certain fossil findings have met with silence and confusion from the evolutionary community (soft tissue in dinosaur bones which could not be more than 20,000 years old, modern-looking bird fossils found in deposits claimed to be older than the first dinosaur, birds and others like this).
9. The proliferation of Darwinian “just so” stories and the widely used phrase “could have evolved” substituting for actual scientific evidence.
10. Things like the impossiblity that there would be enough time to evolve all of the insect species (even more, varieties) known on earth, irreducible complexity of the eye, blood clotting and bacterial flagellum, slight adaptations cited as primary evidence of macro-evolution, the first known multicellular organism is vastly more complex than Darwinism could have imagined or predicted, the denial that abiogenesis is a necessary component of evolutionary theory (because it is uncomfortable to deal with that problem) …

I don’t know of those are my top ten, but there are ten or so off the top of my head.
I’ll give more later.

Thanks to everyone for just using this thread for posting arguments against evolution and not using it as a debate forum. There are plenty of places to debate these issues – but it’s good just to see the catalogue of arguments first without a debate getting it side-tracked.

 

[reggieM]

1. Evolution cannot explain the “ontological leap”
2. Pope John Paul II condemned certain evolutionary theories as “incompatible with Catholicism”.
3. Evolutionary theory cannot explain the evolution of language – since language and symbol are based on immaterial concepts and do not follow from physical laws.
4. Darwinism does not explain the origin of the existence of species – why there are species at all.
5. Conscious, human-directed selection is used to produce desired variations in species (dog breeding). This argues against unconscious, unintelligent selection.
6. Darwinism denies the existence of the human soul (immaterial and spiritual component in man) – or denies that the human soul could have any effect on evolution.
7. Darwinism denies that God’s power, intelligence, design and creation is evident in nature. Theistic evolution denies that God had any discernable effect on the origin and development of nature – it can all be explained with or without reference to God and there is no difference in the result.
8. The universe “appears to be designed for a purpose” (as Richard Dawkins states) but Darwinism denies that there is any purpose or design in nature.
9. Bats have proven to be a major problem for evolutionists , George Gaylord Simpson used them as a means of calculating the tempo of evolution. As described by Norman Macbeth: “working for what ( Simpson) knew of the fossils in time sequences, he could see that the bats wing, for instance, has changed very little since the middle Eocene (about 100 million years ago). If its earlier evolution had preceded at the same slow rate, its total time of development would be greater than the age of the earth, a man manifest absurdity. Therefore Simpson concluded that in the early days the rate for bats must’ve been 10 to 15 times as fast as later.” How would the bat endure this rate of change and do we have any transitional forms to support this faster rate of evolution? Phil Kutcher, in Abusing Science, poses a tough question: “How do bats continue to exist before they had wings? How did they manage while the wings were developing?” And Kitcher offered an unorthodox answer to this question “the answer is obvious the ancestors of bats occupied a different place in the environment. Once the bats had evolved they were able to exploit environmental space it was inaccessible to their ancestors.” A bat without wings might well simply be a mouse. It’s difficult to imagine the kind of environment that wingless bats could occupy without there simply being some other kind of rodent, nor can we determine the reason for their growing wings in order to occupy new environment if the species was surviving in its original environment. Flying would give access to a new environmental space, and since flying must be considerably more efficient than running on the ground, it only wonder what every creature did not sprout wings like that. Again we have no empirical data, no good answer; we have only the authoritative speculations of a professor to verify this belief. (Evolution, Creation and Other modern Myths, pg. 80)
10. It is claimed that 90% of species on earth went extinct due to meteor catastrophies on earth but the remaining, fully-formed species branched to create the fossil tree as known today. At the same time, it is claimed that fully-formed species have not changed significantly since first appearances in the fossil record.