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by JP1967 on December 29th, 2003

JP1967

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What are the arguments against the Theory of Evolution?

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  • by Thom64 on July 26th, 2004

    Thom64

    I know of no argument against "microevolution," so I assume you refer to global- or macro-evolution. While some will not agree with these statements, they are arguments against evolution.

    One simple argument says that every observable complex system becomes less orderly with time and the random input of energy. While some very simple geometries can self-organize (e.g. crystals, snowflakes), I am unaware of any documented complex system which spontaneously organized itself and improves with time and chance. This analysis suggests that evolution would militate against all of human experience.

    Michael Behe argues in "Darwin's Black Box" that there is no reasonable way to evolve highly complex systems that have irreducible complexity. Some of the mechanisms of life are so complex and interdependent that they could not have happened incrementally as none of the individual pieces could benefit the organism - complete working chemical mechanisms would have to "happen," including their regulating mechanisms, or they could not have been selected for survival. In the examples he gives, this is ridiculously improbable.

    Perhaps the best argument against the Theory of Evolution is that there are no pure, objective scientific evidences *for* the global Theory of Evolution.

    In a recent study of the science community, the surveyed scientists acknowledged that almost everything we "know" is subject to change with new discoveries, but when asked if there is any chance that the Evolutionary hypothesis of origins is in error, the almost unanimous response was, no, there is no possibility that we are wrong about macroevolution. This is a statement of dogma, not science.

    For example, evolutionists posit (essentially) that life happened in a primordial pool. There is absolutely no evidence that this happened, but it is misidentified as a fact because 'evolution is true', therefore, it must have happened. In fact, there is no experiment or observation to support the assertion that this could happen - the closest they have come is random generation of amino acids - and statistical models of any demonstrable process indicate that random generation of life is inconceivably unlikely.

    The human genome has about 3 billion pieces of information. That means approximately one piece has been added per year, on average, since they think life began. With many generations of data available, the observed rate of information randomly added to the mammalian genome is zero pieces of information per year (I wonder if they could extract some DNA from an ancient mummy and compare its base pairs against modern man...). It is an article of faith with evolution proponents that this rate was higher than zero in the past. The evidence for this is that 'evolution is true', therefore it must have happened.

    The structure of life indicates design. Though space does not permit, I can make the case that most every evidence, experiment, analysis, observation, etc. supports "The Design Hypothesis" (which says that the evidence indicates that life did not just happen through random chance) as well as or better than "The Random Hypothesis" of origins.

    According to thefreedictionary.com, a scientific theory is:
    ' Noun 1. scientific theory - a theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable" '

    Using this definition, the so-called "Theory of Evolution" can never be a scientific theory because it can not be falsified. There is no evidence, no proof, no experiment that can be presented or conducted that would disprove the Random Hypothesis - which is why I prefer to call it a hypothesis (and I can make the case that it is not even a scientific hypothesis). History can never be scientifically verified.

    I am convinced that most of the tenets of the evolutionist are not deduced from observation and experiment (i.e. "hard science") but rather are derived from the presumption that evolution must be true.

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  • by breadmanpaul on April 4th, 2005

    breadmanpaul

    Before you rate this answer, be sure you read and understand the question. Allow me to restate it for you. The question merely asks, "What are the arguments against Evolution?" The question does not ask for proof or any support of those arguments. It only inquires as to what the arguments are. Below, there is a list of the arguments against evolution. No support or proof of the arguments is included, because the question does not ask for them. With each group of arguments, there is also a link so the reader may investage the source of those arguments.

    Don't be like lynnenorth and geridoc, who apparently lack the ability to read and understand the question and have, therefore, rated this answer based on what their faith dictates regarding the validity of the arguments.

    For example, lynnenorth says: "most of this is simply incorrect, and all dealt with...." This is obviously a statement of lynnenorth religious beliefs and has nothing to do with the question and answer. I have provided ample support that the arguments listed below are indeed the arguments against evolution.

    Additionally, geridoc says: "so much incorrect information in one place." Again, obviously a statement of religious belief. He would have you believe that he has check out the links and found that the list below does not contain the arguments against evolution.

    Hey, folks, let's keep our religious beliefs out of this. Read and understand the question and then rate the answer on how well it answers the question. Thank you.

    1. There is no scientific law that allows something to evolve from nothing.

    2. No scientific law can account for non-living things to come to life.

    3. There is no known scientific law that would allow one kind of creature to turn naturally into a completely different kind.

    From: http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/evoluwrong.html

    ***

    4. The idea that dead material can come to life all by itself is not consistent with scientific observation.

    5. ... according to mathematical statistics, the probabilities for a cell or a protein molecule coming into existence [are] nil.

    6. The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.

    7. Although a few mutations have been scientifically observed that are beneficial, most mutations produce inferior offspring.

    8. It has never been observed in any laboratory that mutations can cause one species to turn into another.

    9. statistically the chances of one cell evolving was the same as a tornado passing through a junkyard and giving you a fully functional Boeing 747

    From: http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/arguments.shtml

    ***

    Arguments for an earth too young to support evolution:

    10. There is not enough dust on the moon to support the age required by evolution.

    11. If the moon is as old as is required by evolution, then either the craters should have sunk into the underlying rock hundreds of millions of years ago, or the rocks on the moon are thousands of times harder than any substance currently known to man.

    From: http://www.geocentricity.com/ba1/no68/moondust.html

    ***

    More arguments for an earth too young to support evolution:

    12. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast

    13. Comets disintegrate too quickly

    14. Not enough mud on the sea floor

    15. Not enough sodium in the sea

    16. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast

    17. Many strata are too tightly bent

    18. Injected sandstone shortens geologic “ages”

    19. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years

    20. Helium in the wrong places

    21. Not enough stone age skeletons

    22. Agriculture is too recent

    23. History is too short

    For details to these arguments, visit: http://www.creationism.org/articles/HumphreysYoungWorld.htm

    Or download the pdf, : http://www.creationism.org/articles/HumphreysYoungWorld.pdf

    ***

    For more information, see:

    http://www.frankcaw.com/science.html

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  • by lynnenorth on October 12th, 2005

    lynnenorth

    There are no real arguments against evolution in the field of science. All the arguments I have seen are based on misunderstandings of or deliberate misstatements of what is known by science, rely on the listener's ignorance of the real details of science, and are generally restatements of the same arguments as have been used since the time of William Paley (1743-1805; biography here: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/paley.html). The site www.talkorigins.org reviews all the common arguments, such as a supposed lack of transitional fossils or the supposed improbability of certain chains of events, or the fallacious claim that mutations never "add information" to the genome, as well as why these arguments don't work.

    The processes and products of evolution can also be nonintuitive and difficult to grasp, as opposed to the appealing simplicity of "God did it." The problem with that is that using ease of comprehension as a measure of truth does not always work. As an analogy, think what your initial reaction would be the first time someone told you that a caterpillar and a butterfly were the same creature, assuming you had never seen a cocoon and didn't know about the process of transformation.

    But what all these arguments all ultimately boil down to is, the idea of evolution offends people, and bothers them at a very emotional level. In some views, evolution makes us "not special", and people have a hard time reconciling that to our natural view of ourselves as the center of things and as the "children of God." People also seem to hold the misconception that you *must* give up any belief in God in order to accept evolution. This is absurd, and there are many, many Christians in science and in biology in particular; the only thing one needs to give up is a belief in the literal interpretation of a supposedly inerrant Scripture. That is, to some, taken as the ultimate argument against evolution.

    EDIT:
    For those who claim that "many" scientists do not "believe in evolution" based on scientific evidence, it is obvious they have no real familiarity with the practising fields of the life sciences. Creationist sites claiming "hundreds" of dissenters may actually have one or two dozen legitimate names; against that I will happily stack the roughly 20,000 life scientists registered with the AAAS and the 140,000 life scientists elsewhere, and I would like to draw people's attention to Project Steve, a graphic illustration of just how silly the creationist "lists of dissenting scientists" are:
    http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3541_project_steve_2_16_2003.asp
    (quote: "Creationists draw up these lists to convince the public that evolution is somehow being rejected by scientists, that it is a "theory in crisis." Most members of the public lack sufficient contact with the scientific community to know that this claim is totally unfounded. NCSE has been exhorted by its members to compile a list of thousands of scientists affirming the validity of the theory of evolution, but although we easily could have done so, we have resisted such pressure. We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!")

    I will repeat: there are no arguments against evolution in the fields of science, although those who object to the idea of evolution on religious or emotional grounds try to make it look as if there were in order to lend themselves an appearance of "scientific legitimacy". It is not honest, and examination of the evidence itself, rather than what they describe the evidence as being, speaks quite clearly.

    News and views from the AAAS:
    http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/evolution/

    Resources from the National Academies of Science:
    http://nationalacademies.org/evolution/

    Policy statement from the American Geophysical Union:
    http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/evolution.shtml
    and an introduction to who they are:
    http://www.agu.org/inside/abt_agu.html

    I also suggest that a trip to any university library, or a sufficiently large hospital library, and a quick leaf through every life sciences journal to be found, would make science's position clear.

    I encourage people to actually look at what is happening in science for themselves -- learn what the science actually is, so that evaluation of evidence can be done from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance.

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  • by Capuchin on December 30th, 2003

    Capuchin

    The main one is creationism, believed by Christians (and other religions I suppose) that all life was created by god separately, and thus could not have evolved from a single ancestor. Their main argument is the lack of the 'missing link' between apes and humans, but as we discover more about this link, their argument is becoming weaker.

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  • by cj123456789 on December 25th, 2003

    cj123456789

    It's really quite simple- life did not start from single celled organisms, heres a really 'brief' summary:

    ---The so-called proofs of evolution

    1) The missing link: obviously this is an important thing to address. After many ‘missing links’ have been admitted false and discovered to be formed off of pig bones and the like, only Lucy remains. Lucy is mainly a small primate skeleton; however the knee joint looks more like a human, suggesting ‘she’ stood more like a human. The one thing the evolutionists do not say is that the skeleton was found in one place, except that knee joint. The knee joint was found over two miles away.

    2) Breeding: evolutionists say that animals evolved in to different animals but this is not true- Organisms stay true to type. Different breeds of dogs are claimed to be proof of evolution, but the evolutionists fail to realize that they are still dogs! Breeding just shuffles genes around that are already in the gene pool, it does not create new genes. Realizing that breeding does not continue at a steady rate can show this. In the early 1800’s farmers tried to increase the sugar in sugar beets. It worked well for 75 years, but after that the sugar content never rose despite the same breeding efforts. This is because once an organism has all of the ‘best’ genes it levels off and cannot improve any more. What’s more, when left alone, organisms will revert back to the original state.

    3) Mutations: Mutations are never helpful. Usually they kill the organism, but this is the only source of new genetic material. Like in breeding, organisms stay true to type- weird fruit flies have been created but they are still fruit flies.

    4) Fossils: Fossils are always found in their complete organism’s form, never half way in-between.

    5) Complexity that is Irreducible: Francis Schaeffer says it simply- Suppose a fish evolves lugs. What happens then? Does it keep evolving? No. It drowns. Evolutionists say things evolved slowly. Another example is the eye; it needs all its parts to work, otherwise it’s useless. The most damaging example is the jump from sea animals to land animals. Gills and lungs both do their job, but they are very different- there cannot be an in-between.

    6) Scientists Made Life: Ok, not really- but they claim to be close. Scientists say that when they mixed random chemicals and zapped them with artificial sunlight, they formed amino acids- they building blocks of life. Then they boiled the amino acids and got them to link into random protein chains. This is all in an attempt to recreate the first cells forming from a ‘soup.’ What they do not tell you is that they used perfectly pure chemicals- never found in nature. Second, they do not tell you about the artificial sunlight. They filter out the harmful rays that prevent the reactions from taking place. Then, after they do take place, they quickly take them out of the light as it will cause them to break up- obviously this is not how it would happen in nature.

    7) Dating: This one is complicated, if you do not trust me on it you can read some books. First of all, the dating of isotope half lives is not accurate for various reasons (such as carbon-14, which is the most accurate but only works up to like 50,000 yrs or something). Even evolutionists realize this and the test results if the dates are ‘wrong.’ Well why do they test if they know it when it’s wrong? Ya got me. More often, the scientists just use their chart of layers. How did they figure out which layers were certain ages if the testing doesn’t work? Ya got me. This one is funny though: an evolutionist (I don’t remember his name) said it best- he said the rocks date the fossils pretty well, but the fossils date the rocks a lot better. I love that one. They determine how old things are by the rocks and fossils they are found with, which they date by each other. Pathetic.

    ---Perfection
    1) Everything about our planet is perfect for life- I, for one, cannot believe that it all happened by chance. The earths distance to the sun give the perfect livable temperatures, and its orbit is nearly circular- unlike the oval orbits of other planets.

    2) Neutrons are larger than protons and protons do not have a tendency to decay- why? I don’t know, nobody does- but it’s perfect. These two simple things make life possible.

    ---Young Earth (The most important, I think- again, you can read scientific articles on these if you don’t believe me- and I’m only listing a few of like 30)

    1) The amount of sodium in the oceans increases every year from run-off- so if the earth is 4.6 billion years old there should be a lot more sodium.

    2) The sun should be half way through it’s life-meaning that it would have already gone through phases of different temperatures, making life impossible during certain stages- so evolution wouldn’t have had 4 billion years, only since the temperature became what it is.

    3) There should be more mud on the ocean floor. There is more mud deposited every year on the ocean floor, which is rock. If the earth is that old there should be a lot more mud.

    4) Everything that the evolutionists say took billions of years (caves, grand canyon, petrified forests, glaciers, etc…) can be refuted or explained. The explosion of Mount St. Helens shows many of these things. Caves and canyons were formed by the explosion, showing that it does not take billions of years. Catastrophes (world-wide flood) can form things very quickly. The grand canyon was formed, giving the Co. R. a place to run- it wasn’t formed by the river. Petrified forests first of all, sometimes have trees standing upright through several layers of rock- layers that are supposed to be millions of years apart. If a tree is standing up for a million years it will be decayed before it petrifies. Anyways, at Mount St. Helens trees were knocked over, some into ponds. Those trees became water logged and sank, some settling upright in the mud at the bottom. They have already started the petrifying process- they will be done in FAR LESS than a million years, or even 500. Glaciers, which were said to take millions of years to form, take FAR LESS time than assumed. This was recently shown be the plane (I think it was a plane) that was found in a glacier. It had crashed and nobody knew where, well when it was found- it was found at a depth that, according to evolutionists, would make the plane older than electricity.

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  • by Baneblessed on November 12th, 2004

    Baneblessed

    Microsoft products are a very good example of design by evolution. They started with simple business application software. But over time, their products evolved into far more complex, more resource intensive, arguably more productive software. And the progression can be tracked by examining the level of complexity in the code at the various stages of evolutionary progress.

    The code their products are written in share so many features in common with the style of coding found in genetics that you hear terms such as "parent", "child", "heredity", and "inherited". The code is reusable for many different purposes with only slight changes to the properties (chromosomes). Of course, such a comparison to human reasoning on the matter of reusable code has only been available for a relatively short time. It would never have arisen before the computer age.

    It is very reasonable as a brilliant and forward thinking intelligent design concept for making many different kinds of computer applications that share much in common at the code level, but are nonetheless distinctly different in characteristic and purpose. Somehow, according to nearly the entire scientific community, this brilliant design concept becomes better chalked up to random chance when it comes to the genetic code similarities between species.

    This new-found reality, and the absence of any mature few-celled organisms where we find an abundance of both mature protozoan (single-celled organisms) and mature metazoan (multi-celled) lifeforms convince me that there must have been an intelligent designer.

    Sorry, I just don't buy it. Evolution is a belief system hinging on a series of extremely remote chances that are assumed to have occurred simply because "We Are". It is a religion, that is perpetuated with the universally understood fallacy, "All (intelligent, thinking, rational) people know...".

    In its ultimate sense, the Theory of Evolution (some would argue that "hypothesis" is too strong a term) is utterly fatalistic and hopeless. The logical conclusion of belief in Evolution is that everything we do, think, or feel is simply an expression of an organism trying to survive - nothing more and nothing less.

    There is no real purpose for anything or anyone in such a belief system. Likewise, there is no true consequence and no accountability, nothing anyone does really matters. If we did evolve then, perhaps, it is Evolution's greatest prank that we are left with a capacity not suffered by any other organism: the capacity to fully comprehend our own futility.

    Evolution is also the ultimate argument in favor of Eugenics. If we are evolved and evolving, we must take the reins and guide our path of evolution or we will surely and irreversibly become extinct.

    But, Eugenics is a study in futility as well, because at best we prolong mankind's brief blip on the world scene. I prefer hope. I choose hope. And THAT, in my opinion, is the absolute best argument against the Theory of Evolution. The Theory is useless in practice.

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  • by Gratis on June 25th, 2010

    Gratis

    If you're talking about scientific arguments, there are none. There are tons of empirical evidence that could easily have falsified evolution, but so far nothing has. All the evidence points to common descent with modification. It's clear from many of the answers to this question, that the arguments against the theory of evolution are mostly based on pseudoscientific misinformation and personal incredulity.

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  • by dlotssarpedon on March 7th, 2006

    dlotssarpedon

    I, being something os a skeptic, feel that there is far more evidence for evolution than against it. Take, for example, the beak of a bird, which I'm sure we have all seen. They're not all the same, because that have varying uses, like breaking open nuts, or tearing at meat.

    Certainly, the idea of creationism is all well and good, but we've got only one source of an answer for that, and the Bible, if you take it literally, is full of inconsistancies.

    Want proof of evolution. Take a look around you. It's everywhere.

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  • by _Big_Boss_ on September 5th, 2005

    _Big_Boss_

    Well I can say it started from a big bird with two eggs ang then entered a small cave then came out and repeated this process untill huge and vast quantities of liquid came in the cave. Then man evolved.

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  • by PocketNut is as sure as a peanut on June 30th, 2010

    PocketNut is as sure as a peanut

    There are a number of arguments against evolution, however none of them stands up to scrutiny, since they rely on distortions of scientific facts.
    Dishonest creationists will pose fallacious questions prefaced by fallacious statements to argue their case, one classic example being; "Evolutionists say we evolved from monkeys", which is untrue, "so why are there still monkeys?", which is an error of logic, since they assume that monkeys have always existed.

    I have yet to find a single piece of creationist 'evidence' which is not easily debunked, although convincing a creationist of this is another matter altogether.

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  • by Morphius on March 30th, 2004

    Morphius

    There aren't many arguments against the theory of evolution, and there would be even less if people wouldn't think so small and confined. People think that everything evolved in one place. But that most likely wasn't so. Since life is thought to have started in the ocean, then that is where the first cell was created. Now that cell divides into two cells, those into four, and so on.
    Now the ocean has currents that run through it, either by rivers, or through the coriolis effect.

    Many cells are floating in the ocean by now, and some of them get caught in different currents, bringing them to different parts of the world. At this time, these cells have to evolve, do to the fact that they are in new areas, with new temperatures, new air pressure, maybe new water pressure. The cells evolve, each with different traits do to the new area they live in. Eventually they evolve into the creatures we know from the past and the creatures we know of the present.

    Factoid #2- One very simple form of evolution is the mind. It "evolves" after an experience to learn from it. It is a simple form of evolution since it doesn't stay in the genes, so the offspring doesn't have this info written into their genes, but the parent may tell its offspring about its experience.

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  • by sickthings on July 11th, 2006

    sickthings

    Personally, I do believe that evolution is much more likely than creation, but there are some puzzling problems. For example, how did wings evolve? Without some form of 'intelligent design', what use were the limbs as they were forming into wings? It would seem that these animals with non-functioning 'half-wings', would have been at a great disadvantage when faced with predators.

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