Sunday, August 30, 2009

30 Reasons Creation is Wrong Part 3

Part 2 can be found here and the article I am refuting can be found here.

So onto the list.

1. The evolution of one kind into another kind is not happening in a measurable way in the present, nor can it be proven to have occurred in the past.


Really? Interesting that this exists then http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/evolutionexampl.html. I was going to go through each one but I figured this one website would cover all the bases.

2. No new kinds of organisms are being observed coming from previously existing organisms. (We "discover" new kinds that we have never cataloged before, but this only shows our ignorance of their existence.)


Of course this doesn’t count the new species of fruit flies we have created in the lab or the constant changing of the flu virus does it? Also there is always this: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v387/n6628/abs/387070a0.html

3. No new structures or organs have been observed coming into existence. All observed structures or organs are fully formed when first observed. (The only observed changes to current structures or organs come from their decay and degradation.)


Except for those lizards cited above some of which went from carnivores to herbivores and had to develop a way to digest the plant matter so they created a new system out of what they already have. But we also shouldn’t see much in the way of organ evolution because it is a long slow process.

4. There are distinct gaps between the known kinds of organisms. One kind is not observed to change into another kind. We do not observe the ‘missing links’ because they are missing, not there, don't exist.


The day that we see one “kind” become another “kind” is the day that evolution is disproven. Evolution does not predict cats turning into dog or whatever it is a stepwise process. In 1000000 your descendants will not look anything like you but if you followed each step in between you might not even notice the subtle differences between each successive generation. As far as the no “missing links” if you mean like the famous crocoduck then I will admit defeat we don’t have any of those, but then again we don’t expect to, but what we do have are these:





5. Life only comes from life and reproduces after its own kind. Life does not come from nonliving material. Life does not spontaneously generate itself.


Evolution does not make a statement about how life came into being that would be abiogenesis. But just for the sake of argument let’s say I know a little bit about abiogenesis. 1) It does not argue that life came from non-life in fact we have found organic compounds in space now which help lead to a higher likelihood of this being true 2) Isn’t that what the literal creation story says anyway aren’t we all made from clay? As for the bit about life reproducing after its own “kind” I have never had anyone tell me what a kind is but as I said line up your past and future relatives and then just look at the two end points say 20 generations apart and tell me how similar they look.

6. Mutations, the supposed driving mechanisms of evolution, are random in nature and are neutral or harmful. They do not accumulate beneficially. Mutations produce the wrong kind of change and will not provide for the ‘upward’ progressive increase in intelligence or complexity required by evolutionists.


This point is fun from the very start. Mutations are no the “supposed driving mechanism of evolution” they are the raw material from which natural selection can “choose.” They provide the genetic diversity that makes each individual of a species unique and different from all of the others. I will agree that most mutations in nature are neutral and that a good majority are harmful in the current environment but it is when the environment changes that allows a previously harmful mutation to become a beneficial mutation. We will use the example of the gene that causes sickle cell. This is a harmful mutation for the people that have it but it also provides a resistance to malaria this is beneficial mutation. So what do we want well in the modern world of medicine sickle cell is a disease that people can get treatment for and can live a relatively normal life. This allows the gene to proliferate and what is even better is that in a person that has both the gene for sickle cell and one of the opposite they still get the malaria resistance. This is a long way of saying that mutation most definitely occurs in the mind and has allowed us to create medicines as well as elsewhere in the gene pool.

7. We observe stasis, not change, in nature. Extinction is a proof of creation. We do not find change in the fossil record nor can we measure it in the present. Animal and plant kinds that exist today retain the same appearance but are smaller in size than their known predecessors.


Interesting but I fail to see how extinction of species is proof of either stasis; of which global climate change, volcanism, etc also apply; but also how this is proof of creation. As far as your last point couple of points I direct you to the Dr. Bruce McFadden paper found here (MacFadden, B.J. 2005. EVOLUTION: Fossil Horses—Evidence for Evolution. Science, 307(5716):1728-1730.).

8. The fossil layers are not found in the ground in the nice neat clean order that evolutionists illustrate them to be in their textbooks. There is not one place on the surface of the earth where you may dig straight down and pass through the fossil layers in the order shown in the textbooks. The neat order of one layer upon another does not exist in nature. The fossil bearing layers are actually found out of order, upside down (backwards according to evolutionary theory), missing (from where evolutionists would expect them to be) or interlaced (‘younger’ and ‘older’ layers found in repeating sequences). ‘Out of place’ fossils are the rule and not the exception throughout the fossil record.


Let me start at the bottom of this statement first. An out of place fossil would be one that was found in a layer that is not of the age that the suspected fossil should be found in example would be finding a mammal in a Mississippian age strata. This has not ever been found if it was then it would falsify evolution right away. But a quick search of the scientific literature finds that this has never happened. Now on to the rest of his point…By “fossil layers” I am going to assume that he means fossil bearing rock layers or just rock layers because there are very few layers in the rock record that consist solely of fossils. He is right in saying that the rock layers are not always perfectly horizontal sometimes flipped upside down and often times just downright missing. But these imperfections in the rock layer can be explained through the process of mountain building via plate tectonics the same pressures that bend rock also cause it to flip. But we can typically distinguish between a rock layer that is laying the way it is supposed to be and one that has been flipped. As for the missing layers that one is easy and simply deals with erosion. All areas of the United States that are currently dry land will not have a rock record for right now where as the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes will have a near complete record. Now my guess is that our author did not make it the whole way through intro geology but instead stopped going after the first class because all of these processes are covered in the class but we start with the simplest aka the law of superposition.

9. Polystrate fossils, fossils which penetrate two or more layers of the fossil record (most often trees), are common throughout the fossil record. In rare cases even large animal skeletons have been found in vertical position rather than in a horizontal position.


As far as the large animal skeletons being found vertical the only ones I know of that have been are the mammoths pulled out of the not yet compressed permafrost soil layers in the Arctic regions. As for the rest:



His source on the polystrate trees is: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html

10. Life forms are found to be complex even in the "oldest" layers of the fossil record. For example, various species of Trilobites are found to have very sophisticated eyesight. Yet evolutionists say that these creatures supposedly evolved into existence when the first multiple celled life forms began to evolve some 620 million supposed years ago.


No we have evidence for life that is much older than 620 million years old in fact we have evidence of communal existence of single celled organisms at 3.4 billion years (source: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#strange_past) And we have solid evidence for multicellular life at the end of the Precambrian 580-545 million years (source: http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/geo_timeline.html). In fact trilobite evolution occurred from at least 545 million years ago till they went extinct at the end of the Permian during the Permo-Triassic Extinction event (source: http://www.trilobites.info/geotime.htm). By the way isn’t it interesting that he uses as evidence against evolution one of the best examples of evolution we have today as well as one that does not currently exist and helps disprove the 6 day creation.

So we are now 1/3 of the way through the list. Part 4 will be the next 10 statments of the list.

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