Question Evolution Day is February 12
Theoretical physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku said,
“Science, however, is never conducted as a popularity contest, but instead advances through testable, reproducible, and falsifiable theories.”[1]
Real operational science is testable, reproducible and falsifiable. Which of course excludes Darwinian evolution, since it is neither testable, reproducible nor falsifiable – at least it can’t be falsified to the satisfaction of Darwinists. Nevertheless in the scientific spirit of inquiry it is good to examine what many believe to be the “science” of evolution. Creation.com and The Question Evolution Project have established February 12 – Darwin’s birthday – as Question Evolution Day. A day to inquire about and question a theory many erroneously think has been established as a “fact” due to the incessant cheerleading by its advocates.[2]
Creation Ministries International has published an excellent article titled “15 Questions for Evolutionists” that covers well many of the unanswered challenges to evolutionary theory. Also for your consideration: a few years back Buzzfeed did a “listicle” featuring creationists asking questions that are either problematic for evolution or supportive of creation. The questions sought to expose a problem with evolutionary theory, but were asked in a manner that made them easy to refute, so I wrote an article to fine tune the questions called “Refining the Questions for Question Evolution day.” It’s in the spirit of these articles that I offer a few more questions (and challenges to evolutionists) for Question Evolution Day.
More Questions for Question Evolution Day
Question: Why do evolutionists tell stories instead of make predictions?
As physicist Michio Kaku points out above, science – by which he means operational science – should be falsifiable. That means that any theory should be specific enough that you can either produce a model based on it, or make predictions based on it – either of which should be falsifiable based on actual observations. If you cannot test a theory in this manner, it is not real operational science. For instance I could have a theory that water is not always a liquid: at some temperatures it is a solid, and at others it’s a gas. You could test this theory by exposing water to extremes of temperature where you would find it becomes a solid at 32°F and becomes a gas at 212°F. Thus your tests would both confirm the theory and provide further detail – limiting details to the theory.
Such testing and limiting is not possible with evolution. Not only can you not test it, or model it, you can’t even limit it. Evolution can explain virtually anything the evolutionists want it to – limited only by their imagination. The more honest among them admit that evolution has no predictive power. Speaking of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Professor Armand Marie Leroi admits:
“The theory is inadequate because it is not predictive. It explains what has evolved, but not what will. There are too many possible courses that evolution can take.”[3]
And in his very next sentence he explains why that is the case:
“We can only follow the journey and reconstruct the route once it done.”[4]
What Leroi has unwittingly admitted is that evolution is not an operational science. It is a historical science. It seeks to explain things in the past. Therefore it cannot, and does not carry the same level of certainty or authority as other testable, verifiable and falsifiable sciences such as physics or chemistry. Many evolutionists chafe at descriptions by creationists such as Ken Ham when they correctly distinguish between operational sciences and historical sciences. Such don’t like the distinction because they want evolution to appear to be as certain, as reliable as hard sciences like physics or chemistry. But it simply is not, and by its nature will never be. Anyone trying to tell you differently is trying to pull a fast one on you.
They’re trying to make evolution seem more certain and accepted than it is. But the facts are simple: Darwinian evolution is not “testable, reproducible, and falsifiable.” That’s why they don’t make predictions. And that’s also why it does not carry the certainty of operational science many would like you to believe that it has. Evolutionists cannot make accurate models or predictions. So they do the only thing left for them to do: tell stories. My advice to you: beware the scientist bearing un-provable just-so stories instead of verifiable theories and reproducible results.
Question: Why do evolutionists use the language of design when speaking of evolutionary processes since they deny any design is involved?
Evolutionist firmly insist: there is no design or purpose, no goal involved in the evolutionary process. That’s not my conclusion, that’s what the evolutionists themselves say. Let me remind you of what the evolutionists themselves say. From atheist evangelist Richard Dawkins:
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.[5]
Richard Dawkins
And from Ernst Mayr, whom Wikipedia calls “one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologist”:
Another widespread erroneous view of natural selection must also be refuted: Selection is not teleological (goal-directed). Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long-term goal.
…
Also there is no known genetic mechanism that could produce goal-directed evolutionary processes.
…
To say it in other words, evolution is not deterministic.[6].
Ernst Mayr
So well respected evolutionists insist that in the Darwinian evolutionary process there is no design, no goals, no purpose. Since that is true, why do evolutionist, time and again, describe what they claim happen through non-designed evolutionary processes with the language of design? This is a regular occurrence. Let me give you a few examples:
Speaking of the unique air exchange system that birds use to breathe with, a system which is quite different from the lung system of mammals, evolutionist professor of biology Leo Claessens exclaims:
“You see right here with anatomy in action in the living animal one of the most elegant and most efficient designs that is present in any living vertebrate, any living backboned air breathing animal.”[7]
Leo Claessens, PhD
Professor of Biology
College of the Holy Cross
“Efficient Design?” What are you talking about? Design is never involved in evolution. Or consider this one – the supposed evolution of compound eyes:
“The first insects evolved 400 million years ago. While they share a common ancestor with trilobites, they are not their direct descendants. Studies show they evolved their compound eyes independently, but from the same genetic blue print.” [8]
“Blue prints”? As in what a designer would produce with a purpose? A plan whose purpose is to achieve a specific outcome? Not in Darwinian evolution – those aren’t allowed. Or consider this about the eyes:
“Binocular vision – seeing things with two eyes is very good for making fine depth judgments. If you have two eyes and you can simultaneously focus on an object in the space in front of you, your brain can do a little bit of trig and decide exactly how far away that object is.”[9]
Chris Kirk
University of Texas – Austin
Why are these evolutionists talking about “design” and “blue prints” and most amazingly – the brain doing trigonometry?! Trigonometry? The non-material, mathematical set of ideas – that trigonometry? How does materialistic evolution operate on those non-material concepts? How does non-goal oriented evolution decide to put that non-material ability into the brain? How do random material mutations – accidents – accurately encode the very specific principles, properties and benefits of trigonometry into the brain? Evolutionists have no answer to this. All they can give you are more just-so stories.
So the answer to – why do evolutionists continually use the language of design to describe evolution – which is supposed to be entirely devoid of design, planning and purpose? Why? Because the impression of design in living creatures is overwhelming. It is so overwhelming that the use of words of chance would make the scientist look foolish. Consider a chance word substituted for the word “design” in the quote above:
You see right here with anatomy in action in the living animal one of the most elegant and most efficient strokes of luck that is present in any living vertebrate…
Not very scientific, is it? Continued use of words such as “stroke of luck” would expose evolution for what it is. A collection of silly just-so stories. You don’t have to be a modern scientist to be overcome with the overwhelming sense of design in living creatures, particularly in humans. That’s why even thousands of years ago the psalmist can exclaim:
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Ps 139:14
The language of design is regularly used by evolutionists because the impression of design is obvious and overwhelming. and the use of words of chance or luck would look foolish and unscientific (which they are).
Question: How do evolutionists explain vision capable of the extraction of 3D information from 2D images – without a designer, purpose or goal to do so?
This talk of binocular vision in order to gain depth perception got me to thinking. How do evolutionists explain the process that brought about the ability to see one coherent 3D image from two different 2D images? Remember, you cannot invoke a designer, or a sophisticated algorithm to achieve that goal. Indeed, you cannot even have a goal. All you have – in the case of a creature are 2, two dimensional images of the same scene, seen from a couple of inches apart. How do you turn those two 2D images into 1 – 3D image? Remember – no design, no formulas, no programs, no algorithms, no goal and no purposes allowed. All you have to work with is random mutations and “selection pressures”. That’s what the evolutionists insist. Also remember – since there are no goals, there can be no selection pressures on intermediate steps that do not produce a beneficial outcome. So if it takes a sequence of a thousand changes, but you only get the benefit from the last change, then natural selection is unable to select the first 999 changes. Given that, how does the creature ever arrive at the final change? How does the ability come about?
Here’s a similar problem. Here is a link to a random dot stereogram [10] that has embedded 3D information. If you’re able to do so, you can extract the 3D info embedded in the image that will allow you to see the 3D objects hidden in the image. (I guarantee the 3D info is there, but it requires binocular vision to see it.) Questions for evolutionists: Where does the brain get the information, the mathematical algorithm to extract such images? How does that ability get encoded into the brain using random processes? Indeed how does that ability also get encoded into the genes so that the ability to extract that information is passed to offspring? Remember, no planning, design or purpose allowed in your explanation.
Question: Why will evolutionists not acknowledge the problem of the information enigma?
Every modern biologist knows something Darwin didn’t: That all of life is made possible by the coded information contained in DNA. As Intelligent Design advocate Dr. Stephen Meyer put it:
“The discovery of the information bearing properties of DNA and RNA is a fundamental challenge to all materialistic challenges to the origin of life.”[11]
Stephen Meyer
Many have compared the information in DNA to the digital information stored in computers. This apparently is very threatening to Evolutionists – threatening enough for them to create a false narrative, a straw man argument. The false argument goes like this.
“DNA is a code and a computer instruction is a code. Since computer code requires an intelligent designer, and DNA is a code, it follows that DNA is a product of, or is controlled by, an intelligent designer.”[12]
But that’s not the point Meyer makes. Meyer’s point is that DNA contains coded information. Quoting Watson and Crick, the co-discovers of the double helix structure of DNA, Meyer points out:
“It follows that in a long molecule, many different permutations are possible, and it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code which carries the genetic information.”[13] (emphasis mine)
So DNA “likely” contains coded information according to discovers Watson and Crick. But we’ve learned much since the initial discovery of DNA, thus Meyer can conclude:
“Thus, in addition to a quantifiable amount of Shannon information (or complexity), DNA also contains information in the sense of Webster’s second definition: it contains ‘alternative sequences or arrangements of something that produce a specific effect.'”[14] (first emphasis mine, second his)
Again, the point is DNA “contains information” and that information exists in the form of a chemical code. Okay, so now we’ve got the claim straight. It’s not that DNA is a code, the claim that has been substantiated is that DNA contains coded information. Given that fact some obvious questions (the information enigma) are immediately apparent.
- Where did the code with which the information in DNA is coded with come from? (Note – this is not saying DNA is the code – the code is separate from DNA itself.)
- Where did the information that’s encoded come from?
(It is known information does not arise from random processes.) - Where did the design of DNA – the most efficient information storage and retrieve system known to man – bar none – come from?
- How did the information get coded into DNA for use of the offspring of living creatures?
Once again the evolutionists have no answers to these questions. All you hear from them is crickets as they say.
Conclusion
So there you have it. Additional questions to ask evolutionists during Question Evolution day – or any day. But don’t hold your breath. Evolutionists don’t have good answers to these questions. If you get an answer at all it will likely be another just-so story. The question to you will then be: will you accept just-so stories as science? Or do you want real answers? If you want the real answer to the origin of life, read Genesis chapter 1. (Genesis 1:1-31)
Duane Caldwell |February 10, 2019 | Printer Friendly Version
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Notes
1. Michio Kaku, ref. from Good Reads, accessed 2/3/2019, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7298184-science-however-is-never-conducted-as-a-popularity-contest-but
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2. For example, Richard Dawkins did a Big Think segment on “The Fact of Evolution”, Oct 23, 2009, https://bigthink.com/videos/the-fact-of-evolution
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3. Professor Armand Marie Leroi, Imperial College, London, ref. from What Darwin Didn’t Know, BBC Documentary, 2009
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4. Leroi, “What Darwin Didn’t Know”
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5. Richard Dawkins from River Out of Eden (1995) ref from: Wikiquote, accessed 3/30/2017
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#River_out_of_Eden_.281995.29
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6. Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, New York: Basic Books, 2001, p. 121
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7. Leo Claessens, ref. from Evolve episode “Flight” Documentary Series, 2008
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8. Narrator, Evolve episode “Eyes” Documentary Series, 2008
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9. Chris Kirk, ref. from Evolve episode “Eyes” Documentary Series, 2008
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10. This random dot stereogram was used in the article Can you find what you Deny Exists? Three Guarantees to make a point about certain things not happening unless there is a purpose to do so. Purpose (and the mathematical algorithm to do so) is also required to extract the 3D information from the stereogram – and neither purpose nor math are allowed to evolutionists.
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11. Stephen Meyer, ref. from The Case for a Creator, Illustra Media Documentary, 2006
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12. Patrick Lockerby, “DNA: When is a code not a code?”, Science 2.0, July 6, 2009, https://www.science20.com/chatter_box/dna_when_code_not_code
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13. Watson and Crick, “Genetical Implications,” 965 ref. from
Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell, New York: Harper One, 2009 pp. 83-84
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14. Meyer, Signature in the Cell, p. 109
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