Evolution will soon be widely rejected (Talk.Origins)

Claim CA110:


 * Evolution is a theory in crisis; it will soon be widely rejected.

Source: Talk.Origins refers to Morton, G. R. 2002a. The imminent demise of evolution: The longest running falsehood in creationism which list numerous examples of what are purported to be this claim.

CreationWiki response:

Talk.Origins is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill with this one.

The claim is supposedly that evolution will soon be widely rejected, yet relatively few of the sources cited by Talk.Origins' reference actually claim that it will be rejected, and those that do make that claim, do not, for the most part, put a timescale on it, so are not saying "soon". The relative handful that do indicate when it will occur predict dates in the future, so it is too early to say that they are wrong.

Most sources simply point out that an increasing numbers of scientists are rejecting evolution.

Many evolutionists are clearly concerned by the rise in popularity in creation and Intelligent Design, to the extent that web-sites (such as Talk.Origins itself) and organizations (such as the National Center for Science Education) have been set up specifically to oppose these ideas.

Talk.Origins offers no support for this claim, and to some extent it is a matter of opinion. If it means that it is strongly supported numerically by scientists, this is clearly a false statement, as other, empirical, theories, such as the theory of gravity, have more support than evolution. If it means that evolution is strongly supported by the evidence, we clearly disagree.

Clearly support for evolution has risen if one is simply comparing support for it now with support for it when it had no support! And creationists agree that most scientists support the hypothesis today. But, whilst support rose from the time of Darwin through to perhaps the 1920s, by which time support in the scientific community was almost universal, since the rise of the modern creationist movement, support for it has been dropping. Admittedly evolution is still overwhelmingly the dominant paradigm, but the number of creationists is rising, contrary to Talk.Origins' claim. There are many documented cases of evolutionary scientists becoming creationists, and relatively few going the other way.

The falsifiability or otherwise of evolution is not relevant to the claim, which supposedly is that it will be widely rejected, not that it will be falsified. Thus there is no contradiction.

Interestingly, Talk.Origins is claiming that predictions of its demise contradict that it is not falsifiable, and at the same time seems here to be predicting the demise of the creation model, yet denies that the creation model is falsifiable. This appears to be a contradiction in Talk.Origins' own logic.

A evolução em breve será amplamente rejeitada (Talk.Origins)