Confronting
Creationism :
A Short
Guide to Debunking Common Creationist Claims.
Religious fundamentalists who still espouse
belief in a geocentric Universe are now met with ridicule and
scorn; not due to discrimination but a lack of evidence for their
cause. Unfortunately, the same can not be said about the 40-50%
of Americans who, despite a near unanimous consensus among scientists,
refuse to accept the theory of evolution. Ever since Darwin published
The Origin of the Species in 1859, the idea of common descent
has been hard for many religious individuals to swallow. The refusal
to accept anything as truth that contradicts the Biblical account
of creation has resulted in a massive war of misinformation waged
by anti-evolutionists in our courts, schools, and places of worship.
Operating under the banners of Creation Science and Intelligent
Design, religious individuals have managed to confuse the public
about evolution and its supporting evidence while sneaking theology
into science classrooms. By educating ourselves about the truth
behind evolution, we can put a stop to this degenerative sleight
of hand.
Claim:
Evolution is only a theory, and therefore uncertain.
In the context of science, the word theory does not imply uncertainty.
It is basically defined as a set of general propositions used
to explain a class of phenomena. If the fact that evolution is
“only a theory” is objectionable, then creationists
should be calling into doubt the theory of gravity, atomic theory,
and the germ theory of disease – to name a few. The theory
of evolution is a package of ideas used to describe how the observable
fact of evolution functions, much as the theory of gravity describes
how the observable fact of gravity functions. The fact that evolution
occurs was recognized well before Darwin’s time. Darwin’s
theory only sought to explain that fact. Today less than 0.15
percent of American scientists working in fields relevant to evolution
are creationists. In other industrialized nations, that number
drops to less than one tenth of one percent.
Claim:
Evolution cannot be directly observed and therefore cannot be
proven.
While it is impossible to prove anything with absolute certainty,
high degrees of certainty can be reached. Evolution has reached
a position of near-certainty among scientists because of vast
amounts of data from a diversity of fields supporting it. While
listing all of the observable evidence of evolution would take
volumes, we can briefly document some of the most compelling supportive
evidence. All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanisms
of replication, heredity, and metabolism. The fossil record shows
species appearing in a chronological order, demonstrating change
consistent with common descent over hundreds of millions of years
and inconsistent with sudden creation. Evolution predicts that
new biological structures adapt from existing structures, thus
the similarity between structures should fall along the lines
of evolutionary history and not function. This is precisely what
has been observed. For example, human hands, bat wings, horse
legs, whale flippers, and mole forelimbs all have similar bone
structures despite their different functions. The wings of birds,
bats, pterosaurs, and insects all have different structures but
similar functions. Many organisms even possess rudimentary, vestigial
characteristics, such as sightless eyes or wings useless for flight.
Microevolution within species is virtually undeniable and thoroughly
documented (Darwin’s finches, etc.), however, even macroevolution
or speciation has been observed in isolated ecosystems. If you
are interested in learning about more about the extensive factual
backup for evolution, please visit your local library.
Claim:
Transitional forms are missing from the fossil record.
As good fossilization requires a number of very precise environmental
factors, it makes sense that finding a fossil of any specific
species, especially a short-lived species, should be extremely
rare. Evolution is often misconceived as a constant, slow and
gradual process, but this is far from what’s been observed.
When a species migrates into a new geographic location, evolutionary
changes can take place relatively rapidly and then stabilize once
an optimal adaptation has been achieved. As such, transitions
do not often show up in the fossil record. Sudden appearances
in the fossil record simply indicate that an existing species
moved into a new region. Other gaps are due to environmental factors,
such as erosion and periods unfavorable to fossil preservation.
Nonetheless, there are still many fossilized transitional forms
that clearly demonstrate the evolution of one species into another
over time. These include: Fossils demonstrating human ancestry;
transitions between species of Phacops (a type of trilobite);
appearance of the horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals)
in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence; fossils
of the diatom Rhizosolenia that show a continuous record of almost
two million years which includes a speciation event; Gryphaea
(coiled oysters), which become larger and broader but thinner
and flatter during the Early Jurassic; dinosaur-bird transitions;
transitions between fish and tetrapods (vertebrates with four
limbs); transitions from condylarths (land mammal) to fully aquatic
modern manatees; Haasiophis terrasanctus (a primitive marine snake
with well-developed hind limbs); and the list goes on and on.
Claim:
The second law of thermodynamics says that everything tends toward
disorder, making evolution impossible.
The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It says that
heat can not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer
one, or that the total entropy ( a measure of useful energy) in
a closed system will not decrease. This doesn’t prohibit
evolution because the Earth is not a closed system, meaning entropy
can decrease within it. Further, entropy is not the same thing
as disorder. Sometimes they correspond, but sometimes order increases
with entropy. Entropy can even be used to produce order, such
as in the sorting of molecules by size. As the only physical processes
necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation,
and selection – all of which are seen to occur constantly
– obviously no physical laws are preventing evolution from
occurring. You can see examples of increasing order occurring
in nature all the time. Snowflakes, cloud formations, dust devils,
ripples in sand dunes, and eddies or whirlpools in streams are
some of these.
Claim:
The Universe/Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, so there
hasn’t been enough time for evolution to occur.
Measurements based on the brightness of supernovae and galaxies
indicate distances of up to billions of light-years, which means
the Universe must be at least billions of years old for the light
to have reached us. Some white dwarf stars have been found to
be twelve to thirteen billion years old, based on their cooling
rate. In the case of the Earth, radiometric dating shows it to
be 4.5 billion years old. (Despite claims to the contrary, radiometric
dating has been consistently proven to be reliable – unless
misused by creationists to intentionally yield bad results.) Radiometric
dating is consistent with the length of time geologists give for
the formation of the geological column. Geological formations
also indicate an old Earth. For example, Loess deposits (wind-blown
silt) in China are 300 m thick and give a continuous climate record
for 7.2 million years. Varves (annual sediment layers that occur
in large lakes) are simple to measure, account for millions of
years, and correlate well with other forms of dating. Some formations
contain millions of annual layers, such as the five million layers
found in Lake Baikal and the 20 million layers in the Green River.
Known climate cycles occurring at 400,000-, 600,000-, and 1,000,000-year
intervals are accounted for in geological strata. Creationists
who argue that the Universe and Earth were created with an “apparent
age” are basically asking us to believe that God intentionally
deceives us.
Claim:
(fill in the blank) is too complex to have occurred naturally,
and therefore must have been designed/created.
This argument, also referred to as the “god of the gaps,”
is implicit in many different creationist arguments, particularly
today’s claims of intelligent design. What is being claimed
is “I can’t conceive that blank happened, therefore
God did it.” In reality, others might be able to find a
natural explanation. Because nobody knows everything, it is unreasonable
to conclude that something is impossible just because you do not
know it. Gods were responsible for lightning until we determined
natural causes, for infectious diseases until we found bacteria
and viruses, and for mental illness until we found biochemical
causes. The “god of the gaps” is confined to those
parts of the Universe we do not know about, and that keeps shrinking.
Complexity is poorly defined by creationists, and occurs in natural
systems all the time without the need for an “intelligent
designer.” In the sort of design we know about, simplicity
is the end goal. Complexity arises through carelessness or necessity,
and this is very different from what we see in biology.
For more
information on debunking the claims of creationists, please visit
the extensive index of creationist claims at www.talkorigins.org.
Compiled
By Jason Glover
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