Above: Abbreviated Family Tree for Homo Sapiens, our own Human species.

Answering Evolution’s Critics
      — How ‘Creationist’ Arguments Are Wrong

(Essay #11, at 6-11-25)              

Many religious conservatives believe that the science of evolution is a hoax or an elaborate fantasy of liberal scientists. Many of these believers are Fundamentalists, meaning that they believe their particular sacred text (e.g., the Bible; the Quran) is infallibly true because it is the direct Truth handed down by God, whom they see as an all-knowing and all-powerful super-man (or mind) who physically created the world and all the creatures in it during the span of seven days. People who believe the world was physically created by God in seven days are called Creationists, and their belief is called “Creationism” or “Intelligent Design.” 

“Creationism” is Not Our Way of Nature’s Continuing Creation

Our Book about Nature’s Continuing Creation has nothing to do with “religious, biblical, fundamentalist creationism.”  In fact, we are very much opposed to it! 

“Biblical Creationists” think that God created all the creatures in a span of six days. Followers of Continuing Creation, on the other hand, clearly understand that all Earth’s creatures are the products of millions of years of Evolution, an evolution that is still happening all around us.

“The Continuing Creation we describe in the book of Essays you are now reading is based solely on Nature, Reason, & Science. Ours is the Natural Continuing Creation that we see and hear all around us — babies being born, masons laying bricks, teachers teaching the young, doctors finding cures for diseases, farmers growing crops, composers writing symphonies.   — J.X. Mason

Advocates of Intelligent Design have been heatedly arguing against the science of biological evolution ever since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859.  Naturalists, biologists, paleontologists, geneticists, and scientists in general have been equally vociferous in refuting the Creationist arguments.

“If I had to pick just a single fact that best proves evolution, it would be the pattern found in comparing the genes of organisms. Using modern DNA-mapping techniques, compare the genes of a selection of animals or plants, and plot out the gene resemblances and differences. They fall on a perfect branched hierarchy, a perfect family tree.”  — Biologist Richard Dawkins (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxZ6MrBl9E.)

Collections of Counterarguments Against “Intelligent Design”

In the 1970s, scientists began to publish books and articles using the latest advances in biology to refute the Creationists, point by point. They wrote in direct, clear language that everyone could understand. Among these publications, the Practice of Continuing Creation singles out four writings as landmarks (listed below in chronological order):

1. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. ¹
2. “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” by John Rennie, (7th Editor-in-Chief of) Scientific American. ²
3. The Online Index to Creationist Claims, edited by Mark Isaak (as last updated in 2006). The Online Index is part of the Talk Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy.  ³
4. “Top 10 Myths About Evolution (And How We Know It Really Happened),” written & published by The Skeptics Society, 2010. This article is downloadable as a free PDF document at the Skeptics Society website: skeptic.com; www.skeptic.com/downloads/top-10-evolution-myths.pdf. 

Note: Publications #1, #2, and #4 above are all entertaining and very well-written, and The Way of Continuing Creation recommends them to general readers.

Publication #3 above is equally well-written and an excellent tool for research: The Online Index to Creationist Claims presents a list of over 580 common objections that Creationists have to the Science of Evolution. The 580 objections are categorized into 10 categories and 53 subcategories.  Each Creationist Objection is answered clearly and succinctly, with multiple scientific references cited for the answer to each Creationist Objection.  Also, see the TalkOrigins Archive online, which has received praise from the Journal of Science, Scientific American, and the National Academy of Sciences. 

Like the four sources listed above, our essay also presents a list of responses to false intelligent-design assertions. Our list draws on the above four sources and others, taking care to give credit to authors at every turn. We have three aims: a) to integrate the evidence from our sources, b) to shorten their explanations where possible, and c) to include some more recent scientific findings.

Intelligent-Design Arguments & Continuing Creation’s Refutations 

Fundamentalist Creationists argue: “Something as complicated as an eye must have been designed and/or made by a super-intelligent Creator.” This false creationist argument is sometimes referred to as “The Argument of Irreducible Complexity.”

Participants in Nature’s Continuing Creation respond: In fact, “The eye evolved from a single, light-sensitive spot in a cell into the complex eye of today not by chance, but through thousands of intermediate steps, each preserved because they made a better eye. Many of these steps still exist in nature in simpler organisms.” — Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 above)

“Darwin suggested that even ‘incomplete’ eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)”  — John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above.

Biologist Richard Dawkins provides a more comprehensive counterargument in his book, The Blind Watchmaker. In fact, many creatures today possess and utilize very primitive ‘eyes.’ Dr. Dawkins writes,

“Some single-celled animals have a light-sensitive spot with a little pigment screen behind it. The screen shields it from light coming from one direction, which gives it some ‘idea’ of where the light is coming from. Among multicellular animals, various types of worms and some shellfish have a similar arrangement, but the pigment-backed light-sensitive cells are set in a little cup. This gives a slightly better direction-finding capability… Now, if you make a cup very deep and turn the sides over, you eventually make a lens-less pinhole camera…The swimming mollusk nautilus… has a pair of pinhole cameras for eyes… and when you have a cup for an eye, almost any vaguely convex, vaguely transparent, or even translucent material over its opening will constitute an improvement, because of its slight lens-like properties.”  — Richard Dawkins

Alternative eye structures have also evolved. “For instance, the curved dish-reflector principle (we use it in radio-telescopes) has been independently ‘invented’ by various mollusks and crustaceans. Other crustaceans have a compound eye, like insects do. (Actually, it’s a banked assembly of lots of tiny eyes.)”  — Richard Dawkins ⁴

If Animals Were “Designed,” They Were Often Poorly Designed! 

If the eye were designed, it was poorly designed. The workings of the eye involve too many steps, too many organ structures in the eye and brain, and too many translations from light into chemical reactions and then into electrical signals. This over-complicated “Rube Goldberg” apparatus demonstrates that eyes were not designed but rather assembled from the biological parts available at each stage of the eye’s evolution over a long span of time. (Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 in the list above.)

Other Animal Features that are “Poorly Designed”

Fundamentalist Creationists also argue: “Something as complicated as a flagellum (the whip-like ‘tail’) that some single-cell organisms used to propel themselves through water) must have been designed and made by a super-intelligent Creator.”              

While the true evolution of eyes was being documented, champions of “intelligent design” have proposed that other biological organs and organelles are also irreducibly complex. Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996 and 2006, Simon & Schuster), argues that a bacterium’s flagellum (the whip-like “tail” that propels it through water) is too complex to have arisen through evolution. Behe contends that the proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint, and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. (Paraphrased from John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above)

A flagellum has a complex structure that produces rotary movement

However, “there exist flagella having forms simpler than the one that Michael Behe cites, proving it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work… The key is that the flagellum’s component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution.” — John Rennie, Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American for 15 years. See “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above). ⁵

Nature is full of creatures with inefficient features. For example, humans, like all mammals, breathe and eat through the same tube, making it easy to choke to death. Also, the laryngeal nerve descends below the larynx, loops around an artery in the chest, and then goes back up to the larynx.  As biologist Richard Dawkins has pointed out, this setup is not very efficient, especially if you are a giraffe! ⁶

The human body suffers from many common and chronic ailments that reflect poor “design.” We humans have weak backs that are prone to injury, spinal discs that could use better cushioning, knees that become arthritic from work or sports relatively early in life; bones that lose minerals after the age of 30, brains that too often clog up with amyloid plaques causing Alzheimer’s disease, teeth that often quickly decay without constant dental care, a urethra in men that runs through the prostate and therefore gets squeezed when the prostate enlarges with age, and many other “design problems.”  ⁷

  Amyloid plaques in the human brain

The Way of Continuing Creation says: If God is responsible for the “fine design” of us humans, then He or She must also be accountable for the “fine design” of the myriad microbes, viruses, and fungi that attack us so relentlessly and successfully. (For more, see our Essay, Suffering and Evil – Causes and Responses)

Fundamentalist Creationists argue that Human Beings, “made in the image of God,” are so complex and advanced that they must have been designed by a “Super-Intelligent Creator.”

Evolution by Symbiotic Merger (i.e., by “Engulfment,” or “Encapsulation”)

Still, there are very early cell structures that do not seem to have been created by the step-by-step process of evolution. For example, virtually all species today are made of cells that each have a nucleus. But the earliest life on Earth – the single-celled microbes called bacteria and archaea – did not have nuclei in them. Biologists are still working to explain the sudden appearance on Earth of the first nucleated cell (in the first Eukaryote) that was the ancestor of all complex life forms (plants, animals, fungi, algae, and protists like the amoeba).  And why did the earliest known Eukaryotes appear on Earth seemingly fully formed, with nearly all their many organelles (the nucleus and other internal structures) in place? ⁸

Biologists Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, Nick Lane of University College of London, and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger (or endosymbiosis) of ancient one-celled organisms. This process involved one bacterium engulfing or encapsulating another and using it to do specialized work within the “mothership” cell in exchange for more reliable oxygen, water, food, and security. The mitochondria (the energy-transducing organelles of eukaryotic cells) “were derived [encapsulated] from alphaproteobacteria, and the chloroplasts (the photosynthetic machinery of plant cells) were derived [encapsulated] from cyanobacteria.” ⁹

Note: “Science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces such as symbiotic merger beyond Darwinian natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of a mysterious creative intelligence whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproven.” (John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above.)

The Practice of Continuing Creation says — Since we know that humans can’t create complex things in a single step, it is curious why we would want to imagine that a divine being, God, would create natural things – bees and leaves — in a single step.  Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to think that God created the initial conditions, natural laws, and natural processes, which then worked to evolve the birds, bees, and trees?

Elsewhere in this Book, we have said that it is impossible to prove that a super-being, ‘God,’ did not, somehow, create the universe. But if God did create the universe, He or She did it by setting the initial laws of physics and supplying the initial impetus of creation.  After that, the systems and processes of Nature proceeded on “autopilot,” following the laws of physics, chemistry, complexity, probability, and evolution, to evolve the plants, fungi, and animals.

Fundamentalist Creationists Argue: “How can evolution create so many wondrous creatures just by chance?”

We Respond:  Evolution does not operate by chance alone. Gene mutations happen by chance, but whether or not a mutation survives depends on whether or not it is “selected” by the organism’s environment.  The environment is very rational about which mutated organisms it allows to survive, reproduce, and pass that mutation on to subsequent generations.

Perhaps a creature (say, a cheetah) has a random genetic mutation that causes the cheetah to limp. Such a creature would likely die before it could reproduce. But sooner or later, perhaps a second mutation occurs, eliminating the limp and producing faster running. This second mutation enables the creature to survive and reproduce; the mutated gene is then passed down to the next generation.

So, while the mutation is random, the selection of the helpful mutations is not. The environmental selection – “faster running is almost always good”– is constant, not random, for cheetahs and many other species.  (Plus, we also get evolution from the very early symbiotic mergers of single-cell creatures, as we have discussed above.)

 “As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence, “TOBEORNOTTOBE” (famously spoken by Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play). How likely is it that this exact sequence of letters could emerge purely by chance? Say there were a million monkeys each typing out random 13-letter sequences on typewriters. Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one [13-letter sequence] a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find TOBEORNOTTOBE among the 2613 letter sequences of that length.”
— John Rennie  (“Fifteen Answers,” #2 above.)

But in the 1980s, Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated [letter sequences] randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet’s). On average, the program recreated the phrase in just 336 iterations and in under 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare’s entire play in just four and a half days.” (John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above.)

Fundamentalist Creationists Also Argue: “There are too many gaps in the fossil record for evolution to be true.”

We Respond: In fact, there are numerous intermediate fossils in those “gaps.” Archaeopteryx, for example, is one of the earliest known fossil birds in a chain of proto-birds (“pre-birds”) having a reptilian skeleton and feathers. There is now evidence that some dinosaurs had hair and feathers. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years.

A sequence of fossils links the modern Horse back to its most distant known ancestor, the small Eohippus.  A chain of Therapsids was intermediate between reptiles and mammals. The Tiktaalik (pictured below) was a now-extinct lobe-finned “walking fish,” intermediate to amphibians, and there are now at least six intermediate fossil stages in the evolution of whales. (See John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2; and Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 above.)

 “Tiktaalik” – the Lobe-finned Walking Fish

In the late 1800s, Charles Darwin’s opponents clamored to be shown the so-called “Missing Link between Apes and Man.” Today, there are at least a dozen intermediate fossil stages since hominids branched off from the great apes six million years ago. (See John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above) Today, we know that the family tree of modern humans contains:

• Ancestor species that died out (including the extinct Neanderthals, who made a small contribution of DNA to many modern humans),
• Living species (such as the chimpanzees and bonobos) that humans are not descended from, but who share an ape-like ancestor with us, and
• Extinct species that humans are not descended from an ape, but share an ape-like ancestor with us.

The Primate Family Tree:

The image above is The Primate Family Tree – From Monkeys to Homo Sapiens (See, “Amended Primate Family Tree,” Frontiers of Zoology, Scientific American, March 2012, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26059891. Also see – 3cefc8408cb375b63ef1427672e3fe1e–human-evolution-tree-human-evolution-timeline.)

“Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between our fossil of Lucy the Australopithecine and modern humans.”
— Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 above.

Discoveries of new species continue to be made almost every year, and the most significant developments are usually documented in the pages of Scientific American Magazine.

Michael Shermer, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, writes, “When I debate creationists, they present not one fact in favor of creation and instead demand ‘just one transitional fossil’ that proves evolution. When I do offer evidence (for example, Ambulocetus natans, a transitional fossil between ancient land mammals and modern whales), they often respond by saying, “Oh, so there are now two gaps in the fossil record!” ¹⁰

Fundamentalist Creationists argue:  “Why is evolution so slow that we can never see it happen?”

We Respond:  Evolution is not always slow. Microevolution (the evolution of very small changes in an organism) can happen very quickly. Inside Human beings, harmful bacteria can evolve over just a few days, developing new cell structures that make them resistant to antibiotics. ¹¹

Or take the common fruit fly, a creature that is easily seen with the naked eye. William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and G.W. Salt of the University of California at Davis “demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment,” thus becoming a new and distinct species of fruit fly. Clearly, we can and do see evolution happen! (John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above)

Fundamentalist Creationists argue: “If evolution happened over millions of years, why doesn’t the fossil record show gradual change?”

We Respond:  Amazingly, this Creationist argument is the exact opposite of their prior argument!  But we’ll answer it anyway.

Typically, evolution is a gradual process because larger, more established populations have already found their competitive niche. Under little pressure to change, such populations have achieved security and stability. Living as they do through large spans of geologic time, these creatures leave plenty of fossils in the geologic strata that show only minor refinements in their structures. (paraphrased from John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” #2 above.)

On the other hand, a whole new species or set of species can develop relatively quickly (quickly in geological time) – but still very slowly in Human time.

Note: In the process of allopatry, (described by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University) takes place when a small founder group of mutated plants or animals becomes isolated from its ancestral group and is subject to new environmental and competitive pressure.  The pressure may cause the group to undergo rapid change and become a new species. The process can happen rapidly enough that only a few or even no fossils remain to show intermediary steps. Thereafter, if the new species finds and grows into its own competitive niche, the species will attain its own equilibrium and thereafter undergo only minor “fine-tuning” changes. Over many thousands of years, these stable populations can leave behind many well-preserved fossils. This general pattern of longer-term stability was interrupted by brief intervals of intense new speciation is known as punctuated equilibrium.  (paraphrased from John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” #2; and from Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 above.)

The Cambrian Explosion

The most famous occurrence of “punctuated equilibrium” is called The Cambrian Explosion, or The Cambrian Radiation, which took place around 580-530 million years ago. Before the Cambrian Explosion, most organisms were simple individual cells, sometimes organized into colonies. Over the following 70 or 80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated by an order of magnitude, and the diversity of life began to flower into the myriad biospheres that we have on Earth today. Most major animal phyla that now exist appeared within the first 20 million years of the period. ¹²

The Cambrian Explosion also led to a major diversification of marine life that forever changed the marine biosphere. ¹³

Note:  Here are the Taxonomic Ranks, named (from top-largest rank down to bottom-smallest rank):  Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. However, certain aspects of taxonomy remain under dispute. (See the Wikipedia article on “Kingdom, biology.”) Humans are in the Phylum “Chordata,” along with fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and others — because we all have spinal cords.

There have been two similar “explosions” in biological evolution since the Cambrian. First, land plants underwent a uniquely rapid adaptive radiation during the Devonian geologic period, about 400 million years ago. Second, flowering plants (“Angiosperms”) originated and rapidly diversified during the Cretaceous period, from 146 to 66 million years ago. ¹⁴ And there certainly have been “explosions” in cultural evolution (e.g., the invention of written language) and in technological evolution (e.g., the invention of computers).  

What Gave Rise to the “Cambrian Explosion?”

Scientists have suggested the following range of possible causes for the “Cambrian Explosion:”

1. The emergence of simple multicellular forms in the Precambrian era provided a changed context and spatial scale in which novel physical processes and effects were mobilized by the genes that had previously evolved to serve unicellular functions. Morphological complexity arose, in this view, by self-organization.” ¹⁵
2. The pronounced rise in the amount of oxygen on Earth stimulated the evolution of lungs and gills to handle it more fully. And/or maybe the rise in calcium content of seawater permitted the evolution of protective shells.
3. An organism’s new traits could have stimulated the co-evolution of different new traits in other organisms:
   
   “For example, the evolution of predation may have caused one prey animal to develop (co-evolve) a defense, while a different prey animal developed (co-evolved) motion to flee. Those two co-evolutions could then cause the predator lineage to split into two species: one predator that was good at breaking through defenses, and another predator that was good at chasing prey.  Actual co-evolution is somewhat more subtle; but, in this fashion, great diversity can arise: three-quarters of living species are animals, and most of the rest have formed by co-evolution with animals.” — C.R. Marshall ¹⁶

Whatever triggered the early Cambrian diversification opened up an exceptionally wide range of previously unavailable ecological niches.  When these were all occupied, limited space existed for such wide-ranging diversifications to occur again. And so, the Cambrian Explosion ended.

Technological Innovations Are Strikingly Similar to “Explosions” in Evolution

The patterns & processes in biological evolution are strongly supported by analogous patterns & processes in cultural and technological evolution. (See our three sister Essays, Nature Creates Patterns of Information & Beauty, Mathematics Evolves in Nature’s Continuing Creation, and Nature Creates Increasingly Complex Systems.) ¹⁷ 

When a new species evolves, the overall event is called speciation. The theoretical biologist Stuart Kaufman writes that an evolutionary explosion like the Cambrian Explosion is a “punctuation” in the usual species equilibrium.  New “speciation” is the typical pattern for both major new species and for major new technological inventions — because they both grow out of the laws of complexity, particularly including free energy’s drive to create increasing complexity; when higher complexity is a way for more “work” to be done with less energy.  — Stuart Kauffman  ¹⁸

Steps in the Invention (the Technological “Explosion”) of the Bicycle 

 Many “Species” of bicycles were built & sold, but only a few survived the competition of the marketplace (“Survival of the Fittest!”)

The history of bicycle technology is a good example of the steps of a major new “technological speciation.” This history describes stages of change that are generally the same for both major new man-made inventions and for new species. 

First, humans discovered that they could place a fixed frame over and around a moving wheel.

> Then came the complementary invention of the wire spoke, permitting the wheel to be strong yet extremely lightweight. (With the wire spoke, all the strength is obtained from pulling, i.e., from tension, not from pushing, on the spoke.)

> We humans then discovered that we have enough balance to sit on the frame, and we are delighted to find that our contraption actually gains stability as it moves faster!

> When bicycles first went into production, there was an explosion of all different kinds of bikes – huge and tiny wheels, tall and short frames. Many of them were fairly ridiculous. In this stage, the bike was exploring its competitive landscape, trying out new niches to occupy.

Next, the bicycle was paired with industrial technology, resulting in a large gear driven by a chain to turn a smaller rear gear. This technology eliminated the cumbersome structure of having a large front wheel and a small rear wheel.

> So far, then, usage and competition have pushed bicycle design to settle down on the most useful and practical version — equal-sized wheels, spokes, gears connected by a chain. We now had standardization of design, high production (“population growth,”) and declining cost.

> For a long time after that, the only changes were refinements – making the bike incrementally better and better: lighter weight, better brakes, shiftable gears.

> After a while, bicycle variations “evolved,” giving us specialized bikes for specialized environments: street bikes, velodrome racing bikes, and mountain bikes.

> Also, two existing disparate inventions merged to create a new “creature:” The bicycle and the gasoline motor enter into a symbiotic relationship (or perhaps “breed”) to generate an offspring called the motorcycle.

Fundamentalist Creationists argue: “Evolution is just a theory.”

We Respond:  First, the word “theory” has a much stronger meaning in science than it does in ordinary language. Scientific theories are grounded in testable hypotheses and historical events, and these explain a large and diverse body of facts about the world. They are often tested and sometimes changed.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching telltale tracks that the particles may leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists’ conclusions less sure.

Einstein’s theory of relativity has been proven again and again over the decades, but it is still referred to as the “theory” of Relativity.  The Weave of Continuing Creation says that The Theory of Relativity should really be named “The Principles & Processes of Relativity,” and The Theory of Evolution should really be named “The Principles & Processes of Evolution.”

The science of Evolutionary Biology is both an experimental and a historical science. Astronomy, geology, and archaeology are mostly historical sciences. In the historical sciences, laboratory experiments are rarer than in, say, chemistry. “But hypotheses are still tested by (a) seeing if they accord with the physical-historical evidence and (b) seeing if they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries…

... “For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of historical hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows… Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.” — John Rennie (John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” #2 above.)

Fundamentalist Creationists argue:  “The only type of evidence offered for evolution is long-dead fossils.”

We Respond:  No, many independent lines of scientific evidence converge to support biological Evolution. “Independent sets of data from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics, molecular biology, developmental biology, embryology, population genetics, genome sequencing, carbon dating, DNA analysis, and many other sciences each point to the conclusion that life evolved.” (See “Top 10 Myths,” Skeptics Society, #4 above.)

Many Lines of Evidence Converge to Support Evolution:

1. Geology Provides Evidence for Evolution

No single fossil alone proves the path of a creature’s evolutionary descent. The fossil record proves evolution because the fossils of the earliest and most primitive creatures are in the oldest geologic strata, with younger and younger strata containing increasingly complex plants and animals.  If you can find fossil mammals (which are geologically young) in the same geological strata as trilobites (which are geologically ancient), then evolution would be falsified. No one has ever found such contradictory data.

Creationists typically attribute the existence of fossils to the “Great Flood” described in the Old Testament’s story of Noah and the Ark (Genesis 5:32-10:1). They argue that the Great Flood killed all creatures on Earth except for two of every species. Creationists contend that when we see fossils, we are merely seeing the preserved skeletons of creatures that died in the Great Flood.

As Geology Professor David Gregor writes, “What you find in the rocks is that more than 99% of all species entombed [as fossils] in the rock record are now extinct; they are not fossils of species still alive today. “This simple fact offers a stark contrast to what you would expect to find based on a literal reading of the biblical story.” ¹⁹

2.  “Evo-Devo” Provides Evidence for Evolution

Since the time of Darwin, scientists have understood that the early embryos of very different animals look remarkably the same when inside the mother’s egg or womb. Since an early embryo of a human seems so much like an early embryo of a snake, the implication was that humans somehow developed “out of” more prehistoric animals.

Today, the study of embryo development and its relationship to evolution is called Evolutionary Developmental Biology, or “Evo-Devo” for short.  Since the mid-1970s, significant advancements have been made in this field.

It turns out that every animal has a “toolkit of evo-devo genes,” and these toolkits are remarkably similar among all animals, from the oldest pre-fish to humans, who have evolved relatively recently. All these toolkits include very ancient genes called names like “Hox genes” and “Pax-6 genes.” These genes have been around as far back as the first single-celled animals. (e.g., the unicellular organism, Amoeba).

Just one of the gene tools in a creature’s genetic “kit” controls the development of eyes, regardless of whether they eventually become the advanced human eyes or the compound eyes of honeybees. Another gene tool controls whether an appendage becomes a fish’s fin, a human’s arm, a bird’s wing, or the appendage of a sea urchin known as a tube foot. These very different final outcomes are caused by where the gene tool turns on, when the “gene tool” turns on, how long it stays on, and how it interacts with other genes.  The outcomes also depend on how the gene tool interacts with proteins that perform functions such as switching, transcription, reception, and adhesion. ²⁰

3. The Science of Epigenetics Supports the Science of Evolution

For decades, it had been thought that biological evolution could only happen if one or more of a creature’s genes changed (mutated).

Today, we know that evolution can also result from changes in the chemical structures that assist in a gene’s expression. The new science of Epigenetics (“on-top-of-genetics”) studies how factors in the development of a creature, including factors in its external environment, can cause modifications in where, when, and for how long a “tool-kit gene” is expressed. Epigenetic changes modify the activation of specific genes, but not the genetic code sequence of the gene’s actual DNA.  This expression can occur when the microstructure of DNA or its associated chromatin proteins is modified, leading to activation or silencing. This mechanism enables differentiated cells in a multicellular organism to express only the genes that are necessary for their own particular activity.

Like mutations in a gene, epigenetic changes can also be preserved when cells divide. Most epigenetic changes occur within the lifetime of a single individual organism; however, these epigenetic changes can be transmitted to the organism’s offspring through a process known as “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.”  ²¹

4. The Processes of Manmade Cellular Automata Support Evolution

Another piece of supporting evidence for evolution comes from simple computer simulations called cellular automata. These include “Conway’s Game of Life” (available and free to play online), which can yield complex life-like patterns using markers on a checkerboard by applying a few simple game rules over several rounds of the game. (See our Essay, Nature Creates Increasingly Complex Systems. Also, you can Google “Game of Life.”)

The “Textile Cone” sea snail has a shell patterned by a cellular automaton iteration process.

5.  Technological Invention Has the Same Step-Pattern as Biological Evolution

(See our above example of the stages in the invention of the bicycle, discussed above in our Section on the Cambrian Explosion.)

Fundamentalist Creationists argue: “If humans came from apes, why aren’t apes evolving into humans?… or.. “If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”

We Respond:  Evolution does not teach that humans descended from apes; it states that both humans and apes have a common ancestor that was neither an ape nor a human, and that lived millions of years ago. When a group of creatures becomes isolated from its main population, it begins to evolve independently.  If that evolution goes on long enough, its descendants can become a new species, unable to mate with any of the creatures from the old parent species. However, this does not mean that the parent species necessarily becomes extinct. They may die out (and it could be soon or much later), or they may persist unchanged, or they may evolve into one or more new species. (Then, any of those new species just mentioned above could live on, and/or give birth to, still newer species, and/or die out.)

In our own case, the evolutionary tree for Homo sapiens (“Rational Man,” i.e., today’s human beings) has grown increasingly complex as new fossils are discovered year by year (see the illustration below).

“During the last seven million years, many human-like species have evolved; including Homo habilis (“Handy Man”), Homo erectus (“Upright Man”), and Homo neanderthalensis (“Man from the Neanderthal Valley in Germany”).  All of these went extinct at different times, leaving just us Humans to share the planet with a handful of other primates.” (Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 above, and John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above.)

Relatively recent DNA analysis indicates that Neanderthals coexisted with Homo sapiens in Europe for a period, and they selectively interbred with them, resulting in humans living today having 1% to 4% of their DNA derived from Neanderthals. ²²

The best way to grasp the pattern of “apes-and-humans” evolution is to take a close look at a drawing of the Human (Homo Sapiens) Family Tree. A number of charts are available online. Periodically, Scientific American Magazine will publish an updated chart of the Evolution of Homo Sapiens Family Tree. In 2003, Scientific American devoted an entire Special Issue to “New Look at Human Evolution,” which contained a number of related charts, graphs, and tables. (available at www.sciam.com).

 Human Evolution:  Timeline and Evolutionary Tree:

Fundamentalist Creationists argue: “Evolution can’t account for morality.  Morality was given to humans by God.”

We Respond: No, this is not true at all. Morality itself is a product of evolution, and that evolution began long before Moses climbed Mount Sinai, even before pre-humans walked the Earth. Morality is not “given by God.” Morality has evolved over time by the evolutionary process of Cooperation, which brings specialization and teamwork to Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation.

We may devote an entire future Essay to Multicellularity and The Evolution of Cooperation.  Here, let us just remark that even wolves, who live and hunt in packs, have a morality. Through instinct and/or learning, they understand that the needless murder of other wolves in the pack is wrong and failure to share food is bad because those behaviors lower the survival efficiency of the pack as a whole. The “morality” of wolves is reinforced and policed by the alpha wolves of the pack. Even honeybees, who operate entirely by instinct, know not to murder other healthy, productive honeybees in the hive.

As the Skeptics Society has written, “As a social primate species, we [Humans] evolved a deep sense of right and wrong to accentuate and reward reciprocity and cooperation, and to attenuate and punish excessive selfishness and free riding.  Additionally, evolution has created moral emotions that tell us lying, adultery, and stealing are wrong because they undermine trust in human relationships that depend on truth-telling, fidelity, and respect for property. It would not be possible for a social primate species to survive without some moral sense. On the constitution of human nature is built the constitutions of human societies.”  (Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 above.)

Fundamentalist Creationists argue:  “Evolution can’t explain how life started on Earth.”

We Respond:  Acclaimed science editor and writer, John Rennie, answered this question perfectly in his Scientific American article, “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” referenced at the start of this Essay  

Mr. Rennie wrote, “The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids, and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses suggest that quantities of these compounds may have originated in space and fallen to Earth in comets, a scenario that could help resolve the question of how these constituents formed under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young. “Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science’s current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a non-evolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless micro-evolutionary and macro-evolutionary studies.”  (John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2 above.) See also our sister Essay, Chemical Precursors to Life on Earth.)

“Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science’s current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a non-evolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless micro-evolutionary and macro-evolutionary studies.” (John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” #2 above. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/.)

Fundamentalist Creationists argue: “The second law of thermodynamics says that evolution is impossible.”

We respond:  In Physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all systems – including all living things – eventually run out of energy, wind down, and collapse into disorder. In science, disorder is referred to as “entropy,” and “maximum entropy” signifies the state of complete and total disorder.

However, the Second Law applies to closed, isolated systems. Those are systems that are not continually receiving new energy from the outside. When their energy runs out, such systems die.  For example, if a pocket watch stops periodically receiving new energy by having someone wind its mainspring, the watch stops. Over enough time, the watch will also rust and fall apart.  You can delay the rust by sealing the watch in a concrete bunker, but over eons of time, both the bunker and the watch will inevitably decay into the soil of the Earth.

Open systems, on the other hand, do continually receive new energy from an external source, and they can use that energy to build order and structure within themselves. (In other words, they can use the energy flow to decrease their entropy.) The Earth is one of these open systems because it continually receives new energy from the Sun. Specifically, Earth receives both light and heat generated by the continual thermonuclear explosions within the star we call the Sun.  (John Rennie, “Fifteen Answers,” #2; and Skeptics Society, “Top 10 Myths,” #4 above.)

On Earth, the Sun’s energy is used to build mineral crystals, assemble snowflakes, and construct and run every living thing that has ever existed on our planet. While it is true that the sun is running down and will eventually die, as long as it continues to shine (expected to be billions of years) the Earth will receive the energy input it needs to sustain life [and life’s technology], and in fact to fuel life’s [and hopefully technology’s] progression on Earth. The Path of Continuing Creation states that our ongoing energy throughput from the Sun (and the heat of Earth’s core) and the creative evolutionary processes they enable are what we refer to as “Nature’s Continuing Creation” at work here on Earth. (See John Rennie’s, “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” and the Skeptics Society’s “Top 10 Myths About Evolution (And How We Know It Really Happened),” both mentioned at the top of this Essay.)

Hopefully, when our Sun dies out, billions of years from now, we humans will have colonized other solar systems whose suns have long remaining lives. If we don’t kill ourselves off, humans and/or our descendants may be around to see it.

______________________________
           — J.X. Mason   ContinuingCreation.org

Footnotes:

1. Published by Oxford University, 1986, W.W. Norton.
2. Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense, Scientific American, July 2002, pp 78-85. Available in libraries and from Scientific American.
3. See: //www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html.
4. The Blind Watchmaker, #1 above, pp. 85-6.
5. “Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” Scientific American, July 2002, pp 78-85. Available in libraries and from Scientific American.
6. C. Rowe, “Playboy interview of Richard Dawkins,” August 20, 2012. Playboy Magazine, http://www.playboy.com/articles)
7. S. Jay Olshansky, B.A. Carnes, and R.N. Butler, “If Humans Were Built to Last,” Scientific American, 2003, updated from March 2001, pp. 94-100
8. Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, 2015, W.W. Norton, pp. 34-52.
9. Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, 2015, W.W. Norton, p. 36.
10. Michael Shermer, “The Fossil Fallacy: Creationists’ Demand for Fossils that Represent ‘Missing Links’ Reveals a Deep Misunderstanding of Science,” Scientific American, March 2005, pg. 32.
11. Leslie Pray, “Antibiotic Resistance, Mutation Rates and MRSA,” 2008, Nature Education 1(1):30.
12. A.C. Maloof, S.M. Porter, et. al., “The Earliest Cambrian Record of Animals and Ocean Geochemical Change, 2010, Geological Society of America Bulletin. 201. 122 (11–12): 1731–1774. Bibcode:2010GSAB..122.1731M. doi:10.1130/B30346.1.  Also, New Timeline for Appearances of Skeletal Animals in Fossil Record Developed by UCSB Researchers, 2010, The Regents of the University of California.
13. A. Zhuravlev and R. Riding, The Ecology of the Cambrian Radiation, 2000. Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-10613-9.
14. R. Cowen, History of Life, 2002, Blackwell Science. ISBN 1-4051-1756-7.
15. J.Y. Chen and P. Oliveri et.al, and E. Bottjer, D.J., “Response to Comment on ‘Small Bilaterian Fossils from 40 to 55 million years Before the Cambrian,’” 2004, Science, 306 (5700): 1291. doi:10.1126/science. 1102328.
16. C.R. Marshall, C.R. (2006). “Explaining the Cambrian ‘Explosion’ of Animals,” 2006, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. (abstract). 34: 355–384. Bibcode: 2006AREPS..34..355M. doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.33.031504.103001.4.
17. R. Cowen, History of Life, 2002, Blackwell Science. ISBN 1-4051-1756-7.
18. Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity, 1995, Oxford University Press, p.14.
19. David R. Montgomery, Even Setting Evolution Aside, Basic Geology Disproves Creationism, published online, The Conversation: Academic Rigor, April 28, 2015.
20. Sean B. Carroll, “Evo-Devo and an Expanding Evolutionary Synthesis: A Genetic Theory of Morphological Evolution,” 2008, Cell. 134 (1): 25–36. PMID 18614008. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.06.030.  Also, S. B. Carroll, “The Origins of Form,” Natural History, Retrieved 9 October 2016.
21.   V.l. Chandler, “Paramutation: From Maize to Mice,” Cell, 128 (4): 641–5. PMID 17320501. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2007.02.007.
22. J. Pinkowski, “Neanderthal DNA Lives on in Modern Humans, “Time Magazine, 5-6-2010.