Facts from science they don’t shout about:
Scientists know (through the first and second laws of thermodynamics) that the universe had a beginning and in that beginning, all the finite universal matter and energy was injected, from outside of our resulting universe. From outside of nature. Super-to-nature. Supernaturally, it’s a scientific word, not hocus-pocus.
The DNA/RNA needed for life, contains an immensely sophisticated information and language system. Matter, inorganic compounds and the like, cannot have come together of its own accord, to form information or a language to convey said information, any more than ink and paper can come together to form these words. No amount of time would give rise to this.
Einstein’s theories demonstrate that information and language are massless and timeless (like software on a computer). Matter has mass and so is subject to time, so cannot come together to form information and language.
You need a fully-fledged mutating replicator (a life form), to get another mutating replicator (life form). Life could not have emerged naturalistically from simple inorganic compounds, from a primordial soup or any other soup. Not even single-cell organisms. Evolution (even neo-Darwinian) cannot account for the origin of life; it presupposes the existence of a mutating replicator to get life going in the first place. It’s literally “chicken or the egg”; and the answer is “a near instantaneously formed, fully grown male and female chicken and at the same time a lot of single cell organisms, plus a lot more”.
Life forms are systems that can’t be put together by a series of small, undirected steps. All the components need to be present and operational, from the start of the life; there also needs to be a target purpose in mind! Behe’s Irreducible complexity and the necessity for intelligent design explains this. Essentially, if intelligence and a reason, is necessary to make something as simple as a mousetrap, we have strong reason to think it is necessary to make the much more complicated machinery of the cell and the abundance of interdependent eco-systems required for life.
The formation of species is better defined as dispersion, not evolution. Evidence better fits a model where the tree of life started with 1000 to 1300 origin kinds (for land animals, more for the sea), that have since separated into the many species we now see. Far from advantageous mutations having produced further variations in these life forms, (an oxymoron, as no such thing exists) separation into distinct species has occurred with the reduction of genetic information into further derivative, discrete and distinct life forms. Survival of the fittest still applies, just with a different, more logical trajectory. Today we have less kinds than in the beginning and less species than at their peak. Occasionally we see new species form. Never do we see new kinds form.
Characteristics, thought to be lost, return through recessive dormant genes, occasionally reappearing and being then spread through natural selection, not naturalistic mutations. They can then go dormant again, like in those studied moths that were once white, then went black, and less often told, then white again. These original “kinds” had a remarkable adaptability built in, splitting into distinct adapted species, to support their inter-generational survival. Leading breeders of plants and animals utilise this “recessive info” model, not the “increase in info” Darwinian one, used by school examiners, because their livelihoods depend on it. They use what works, not what they’d like to think is true.
Atheistic reductionism does not make sense of the data. Biblical theism is a credible alternative, that far from leading to intellectual suicide, makes better sense of the data
There is scientific evidence for a beginning, even though science cannot comprehend the nature of that beginning
Neo-Darwinian evolution cannot account for the origin of life, it presupposes the existence of a mutating replicator in order to get going in the first place. Neo-Darwinian evolution cannot be an explanation for the existence of the very thing without which it itself cannot get started
Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms (to select, there needs to be something to choose from)
Fish are amazing creatures in their own right! Evolution minimizes them as base, inferior creatures in the chain of evolution. Octopi can solve complex puzzles and mazes, dolphins have sonar and use 20% of their brains (we use only 10%).
Mutations don’t bring improvements or added information, but reductions
Helpful survival characteristics, don’t permeate in unmanaged (wild) populations, only in controlled breeding (this disproves the last bastion of evolutionary theory, that natural selection/survival of the fittest, is at least one acceptable notion)
Fish to lizards to birds is the outline of a branch of evolution, but never is it fully explained, just outlined based on similarities, the logic of which is rarely challenged, even though easy to do so (perhaps because it’s part of the educational curriculum and so joins “the emperor’s new clothes” genre of ideas). Given all kinds and species appear “evolved to the hilt” uber suited and adapted,
What possible conditions could arise to make a fish better off out of the water, or a lizard better off in the air, and their brothers and sisters remain not doing that? That is to say, the things other things are purported to have evolved from, still exist as they were, suggesting there is no need or likelihood for diversification on a naturalistic basis
What possible conditions could arise to make interim modification / transitionary states of half fish/lizard or half lizard/bird sustainable? A fish with legs, might get a different meal, but is now less good at swimming so less likely to survive, where it needs to, to reproduce, in the water. A lizard born with hollow lighter bones might fly to a better meal once or twice, but can’t get about to get the remaining meals it needs to survive
Transitionary states are lethal, one mistake and a fish out water, holding its breath dies, has no babies; lizard jumps off too high a spot, and doesn’t fly, dies, has no babies.
Sudden changes of state are implausible:
in this moment I process oxygen from water, in the next from air
in this moment my bones are solid and strong for climbing, in the next hollow for flying
in this moment my fins are soft and need to be kept wet and unscratched, in this they are tough and articulated to bear weight and press on land
in this moment I have scales, in the next skin with feathers and new glands excreting new oils that I didn’t before, to keep the feathers working optimally for flight I’m about to start doing
in this moment my eggs are covered in jelly and suited to water, in the next they have a shell and need to be warm in the air
In-lifetime newly learned behaviour and in-lifetime developed physical capability are not passed down to your offspring in genetics. You can teach Chimps to read and sign language, but their children don’t inherit this. You can learn to hold your breath for longer than normal, but it won’t be passed down to your children. There are butterflies that migrate so far and back, it takes three generations to complete a migration. Three! That can’t have evolved naturalistically.
There’s no scenario where half the constituent parts of a Human (or any life form) could survive (or reproduce) before the other half of the parts have fortuitously morphed into existence. Minutes will kill you before millennia can bring you the good fortune of skin or an ankle joint.
If you can surpass all these hurdles, then a male and female need to exist, in proximity to one another, with the same mutated changes, and the propensity to pass these mutations on to their off-spring (far from a given)
And final you need to believe that, without purpose and design, many fortuitous micro changes (which have proven to be impossible) further developed incrementally towards an optimal purposeful, life form (whilst also leaving no fossil traces of such intermediaries) without dying trying or before producing offspring going in the same direction (with all the impossibilities of that above addressed), and so having to have that direction of evolution start from scratch again and again, and do all this at the same as a myriad of other animals and ecosystems you are dependent on or are dependent on you! Good luck! Oh and science has proven that luck, or true randomness, isn’t possible.
Instantaneous is more logical than incremental. Logic typified by “irreducible complexity” (an organism needs all say ten of its functions in order to continue existing, nine or less would mean it couldn’t survive) rules out gradual progression.
Information and language are massless and timeless (like software on a computer, but Einstein’s theories prove it better). DNA/RNA contains an immensely sophisticated information and language system. Matter (which has mass and is subject to time) cannot come together to form it, any more than ink and paper can come together to form this essay and convey a meaningful message of its own accord. The content of DNA/RNA had to come from outside of time and space.
You’ll find a Lamborghini logo on sports cars and tractors. You wouldn’t assume one evolved from the other, just that the same company worked on designing and building both.
As a Christian, if you’ve intellectualised away all of the above, you then have to contend with the idea that evolution, if used by God to create, necessitates actions by Him that are against His very nature, those of death and decay. At this juncture, the fall has yet to occur, so presumably creation is brought about without death or decay to facilitate. So evolution, as well as being intellectual suicide, is contrary to the teachings of the Bible about God.
In one literal day God created fish and birds. There was no evolution out of the water into the sky. These two aspects of creation, according to the Bible, happened on the same day. They are unique creations.
Then we have the first according to their kind.
The modern creationist view is that, since Noah took only two of the cat “kind” aboard the ark, the 30-plus species of cats alive today have formed since the flood, via adaptation, natural selection, and biological change.
Species vary, change, and even appear over time (and the definition is constantly debated). The biodiversity represented in the 8.7 million or so species in the world is a testament, not to random chance processes, but to the genetic variability and potential for diversification within the created kinds.
The supposed vehicles of evolution are mutations, natural selection, and other mechanisms that—when combined with that “magic pixie dust” of time—allegedly led to the development of all life forms present today. However, natural selection merely redistributes or reduces preexisting genetic information, and mutations always corrupt the information.
God designed creatures with the marvellous ability to adapt to different environments as they spread out to fill the earth. Species can change; in fact, they do so surprisingly quickly. But one Kind cannot change into another Kind.
Then we have that “God saw that it was good”, even before he blesses them, which makes them, later the same day, capable of reproduction. But not before this blessing, and even without it, they were seen as good.
If it was “good” the creation process can’t have involved suffering. The creation process can’t have utilised natural selection. Natural selection, if it works at all, let’s assume parts do*, came after the fall. * The parts where dormant, inherited genes cause traits, not previously prevalent, to the fore; not mutations magicking up new DNA information, that can also be passed down a generation.
To survive life has to:
1. Hold itself together in clumps / not fall apart in its environment.
2. Repair itself from damage.
3. Be able to find food/energy.
4. Move towards food/energy.
5. Be able to get food/energy.
6. Be able to process food/energy.
7. Reproduce itself.
Evolution holds that:
· Chance mutations add features.
· Features, useful to survival, help survival, and so get greater chance of replication through to next generations and so “stick.”
· All features came about this way, due to environmental necessities.
· Features and abilities exist because that’s all that can survive.
· That everything living thing progressed incrementally this way from “simple” living things into the most complex.
However:
· All seven key features need to exist at once, in the first place, for mutations to even start to be a possibility.
· There’s no such thing as a simple single cell organism. Such organisms themselves demonstrate all seven features.
· Mutations never add information, they just alter or damage existing information.
For example, consider the hunched over ape, in the classic evolution cartoon, depicting progression from apes to standing man as silhouette cartoons, consider if you will, logically in what order, the following features of that “primitive ape” were added over the generations to get it evolved to that state:
a) Skin
b) Blood
c) Feet
d) Elbows
e) Eyes
f) Brain
g) Lungs
h) Smell
They all have to spring into existence all at once, or you don’t live to the next day let alone have a baby with another similarly evolved being, to add another bit of fortune to the next generation.
Or put it another way, can you pick half of these features with a hopes at survival?
Or yet another, the brain is key. No brain, all the other parts won’t work. But the brain needs all the other parts or it won’t work. If it doesn’t work it disintegrates and you don’t have life.
So just what was it they taught you in school that explains this? They didn’t. The theory is flawed.
To get ahead in the sciences, you should pretend to accept evolution.
However, to get ahead in the sciences, you should accept creation.
!?!
To be accepted by peers and progress your career, it seems necessary (but devious, so don't) to say you believe in evolution. Especially in the sciences and if you work for the BBC ;-)
But if you want to progress science, make new findings and indeed make a living from using your findings, you're better off believing in creation. Ask any plant or animal breeder. You can play lip service to evolution, but when your livelihood is based on how you understand things, you'd better use how things actually are based on evidence.